Project SA-N5
by uncannycookie
Summary: Project SA-N5 wasn't a big deal. Just some tinkering with souls and magic. It wasn't really supposed to be more than an artificial lab assistant. It was not supposed to look like a child. It most certainly was not supposed to become sentient. Pre-canon, kind of human AU.
1. Prologue

**Prologue**

The creators of project SA-N5 are without a doubt the three most underappreciated and most undeservedly overlooked monsters in the entire underground. Yes, they do all inhabit a position that most others in their field can only lust after in dreams, and yes, they do earn an insane amount of money. But what good do money and prestige do if they can't even get you allowance to work on one of the rarest resources of monsterkind? _Blueprints_ of human souls, that is the most they can ever hope for. Apparently one has to be a Royal Scientist in order to even look at the actual souls. And the three Assisting Royal Scientists, as it is, are sat in their laboratory. Bored out of their enormous minds.

They are also most definitely not wallowing in self-pity, thank you very much.

Boredom, as is generally known, can lead to rather questionable actions. Much in the same nature one might start tossing peanuts into a sleeping colleague's open mouth, the three scientists begin tossing ideas ‒ mainly for the frustrating lack of peanuts and sleeping colleagues.

Dr. Pollard is the first to start scribbling schematics on the chalkboard, twitching cat ears clearly giving away his eagerness to prove his worth to Dr.-grand-and-brilliant-and-almost-definitely-not-the-least-bit-scary-Royal-Scientist-Wingding-Gaster.

Dr. Grynn is the one to snatch the chalk from his fingers, her wide grin nearly splitting her face in half in her absolute glee over a project not supervised by Dr.-holier-than-thou-I-can-touch-human-souls-Royal-Scientist-Wingding-Gaster.

Dr. Freeda is the last to join them at the chalkboard, if only because her knees are acting up again. But somebody has to keep these children from burning down the lab, and Dr.-whoops-apparently-that's-explosive-Wingding-Gaster sure as hell isn't going to do it.

Creating a human soul from scratch is of course just idle fantasy, though they do quite enjoy indulging in it for a while. With motivation as well as boredom slowly dissipating over the weeks however, the project's goals are necessarily tweaked to something slightly less daft.

Project _Human Soul - Number 1_ swiftly becomes project _Human Soul (Artificial) - Number 2_.

Which becomes project _Soul (Artificial) Number 3_.

And then _SA-N4_.

By the time they are fiddling with Project _SA-N5_ , they are all right back to being the most underappreciated and disregarded monsters in the entire universe and neither money nor prestige are worth anything if you're constantly overworked, your boss is kind of crazy and your one singular pet-project is ‒ actually rather unimpressive.

It's really time to just finish the damn thing and move on to something more interesting.

* * *

 _I'm also posting this on AO3 and tumblr. No idea how to put a link here, but my username for both sites is uncannycookie._


	2. Designation: Sans

**Start-Up Inconclusive**

"Well, that's official then." Pollard throws the stack of documents in his hands over his shoulder. "The artificial aging process was a total failure." He heavily leans his elbows on top of the incubation pod and stares at the faint silhouette of a child, barely visible behind the fogged up glass.

Grynn dodges the gently falling papers with her signature amused grin, showing off her wide row of small, shark-like teeth. "I wouldn't go quite that far," she says, safety goggles already in place and pulling on her gloves as she walks over to the incubation pod. "It looks about ‒ three years old, I'd say."

"Considering the original plan was to create a fully grown and functional soul, I don't see how I'm not allowed to call this a failure."

"Remain objective, please," says Freeda and as usual there is not much distinction between her tone of voice and a computer's poor imitation of actual speech.

She pushes herself away from the desk, effortlessly swiveling around with her chair and stopping again right next to the incubation pod. How she manages it with legs too short to reach the floor is a mystery for the ages.

"Both soul and body have obviously experienced growth at a faster rate than would be expected from a living monster, so the artificial aging process was obviously at least partially effective." She already has the delicate syringe filled with blue magic ready and is now holding it up against the light, flicking her finger against it.

Pollard watches her with resignation in his eyes. "Is there even a point to finishing this anymore? It's a failure, like the others. We should just terminate it and start again from scratch."

"If you say 'failure' one more time, I'm gonna stuff your mouth with all of these papers," warns Grynn, gesturing broadly around Laboratory 4 and the numerous pages covering a large percentage of its surfaces ‒ most of them thrown there by Pollard in one of numerous bouts of frustration. "And for the record, I'm never doing a experiment like this again. Ugh. So annoying. But if we don't at least finish this one that's gonna be one hell of a brain-itch for me, so let's just inject it with the last dose of magic and see what happens."

"Agreed." Freeda doesn't look as if she would have stopped in her actions even if they had come to a different conclusion. Without further ado, she injects the magic into the IV line leading into the pod.

The small tube visibly glows, even surrounded by the sterile white of the laboratory. A hissing sound accompanies the process as multiple machines pick up their work at once and begin pumping the injection into different tubes, simulating a biological magic circulation. On the inside, the deep blue glow from the figure's chest starts to brighten and spread in flickering steps.

Pollard crosses his arms with a sigh. He had been hoping to get off work a little earlier today, but apparently they're going through with this now. He already works crazy hours and he has a wife and kids at home ‒ there are other things he should be doing than spending his free time completing an outdated experiment just for the sake of completion.

At least the other two don't seem particularly eager either, so they'll probably all work together on getting this done as quickly as possible.

He turns to the observation monitor to check the soul's status.

"Everything normal," he announces, skimming over the statistics and pulling on a pair of latex gloves and a face mask in the meantime.

Freeda is already covering her short gray locks with a white cap and Grynn is busy pulling her thick black hair into a tight bun. Once all three scientists are properly covered up and disinfected, Freeda immediately starts typing the opening command into the console.

They haven't opened the pod since they completed assembly of the soul itself about three months ago. Since then it has been lying in its protected environment, being fed magic and chemicals over the tubes to simulate the biological creation of a soul and body. According to the cameras monitoring the pod and its contents, their assumption that the soul would recognize its lack of a body and simply proceed to build its own did prove correct, though they haven't been able to get any clear images beyond the general size of the body.

The three of them take up positions in front of the pod and watch it slowly whir to life. The clasps holding everything in place are loosened, the net of tubes and wires carefully disconnected. With a quiet hiss the lid slides open just a bit, spilling rolling white fog over their feet, edges marked with deep blue light.

Pollard takes a short breath and straightens his shoulders. "Alright, let's get this over with."

He steps to the edge of the pod, removes the last few clasps by hand and together, Grynn and he push the lid open entirely. Freeda watches from the side, just about tall enough to not have to stand on her tiptoes to look inside.

He can still see the soul, which is a relief already. They took measures to keep the soul easily accessible even with a body surrounding it, but there was no guarantee it would work; as it is, in the middle of the body's chest is a round spot of artificial flesh, which is translucent enough to see the soul pulsing behind it.

Seeing the result of this idea ‒ his idea, no matter what Freeda says ‒ almost gets Pollard motivated again. Almost.

When crafting the soul, they mostly used the human soul blueprints as a reference, so it's not much of a surprise that the body they're now looking at doesn't have many monstrous features.

Still, Pollard did expect at least something, anything to unambiguously distinguish their creation from humankind. Every monster usually has at least one such feature, a disproportionately large head and completely black eyes in Freeda's, an extremely wide mouth and sharp canines in Grynn's or catlike ears and whiskers in Pollard's case. But apart from the blue glowing soul in its open chest cavity, the childlike body in the pod is virtually indistinguishable from a human at the moment.

"Readings are stable," Grynn announces, before turning to Pollard with her sharp grin. "Shall we?"

He grumbles a bit, really not in the mood for banter. They both take hold of their creation and with one short tug release it from its gooey bed of clear, gelatin-like liquid.

Once it's deposited on the operating table to the side, they take care to immediately reattach some of the tubes and machinery. The connection ports they included in the piece of artificial flesh also grew in nicely. Since the body grew around the cables attached to the soul, there are multiple holes in the skin where they can add stabilizing ports later on.

They quickly clean away any remains of incubation fluid, dry the body off and clothe it in a thin hospital gown. They left a hole in the front, right where the soul sits, so it remains clearly visible at all times.

Now that it's removed from the slimy incubation and is easier to see in the light, Pollard can make out the body's exact colouring. With a strange sense of relief he notices that the tiny tuft of hair on its head is a stark white with hints of blue ‒ a colour palette that he is pretty sure is unnatural for humans. The eyes are closed for now, but they are very large and the hue of its skin is also pretty dark, which in humankind is rarely combined with such bright hair, as far as he knows.

Such odd rules those creatures have for their appearance.

Freeda is examining their creation's arms, legs and torso, carefully but professionally testing the joints and observing the magic circulation as far as its visible. Weeks ago the monitors already picked up on the fact that it also developed a blood flow like humans, but it mostly coincides with the normal magic flow, so it's easy enough to understand.

"This turned out very well," is her conclusion. "No major structural weaknesses so far."

"Apart from the fact that it's the body of a three-year-old," Pollard sighs, regaining a good part of his frustration with this entire thing. "This could have been so much better if we hadn't somehow messed up the aging formula."

He isn't blaming anyone of course, but he knows it was Grynn. She gets distracted sometimes.

"Quit your whining already," she immediately chastises him. "You can do the next project by yourself, if you insist on being such a pain."

"Well, maybe I will." He has his own ideas, after all.

"People." Freeda obviously wants to say 'kids' instead, but she has this thing about respect and professionalism at the workplace ‒ it's fairly old school to be honest. "Focus on the work please."

With a sigh they turn back to the project.

Freeda is now holding its face and pries open the left eyelid. The eyes are black, similar to Freeda's, except for the fact that there is also a small, glowing white pupil that immediately begins darting around in its socket, taking in its surroundings and then sharply focusing on the three scientists.

"Oh, that looks good." Grynn is actually getting a bit excited now it appears, and Pollard too can't help but lean forward to get a better look. "It's awake already. Seems aware as well, to some degree."

Both eyes are wide open now and rapidly switching back and forth between the three faces hovering over the operating table. As big and round as they are, they create the illusion of a scared or outright panicked expression, but of course if was clear from the beginning that real emotions would not be achievable with this kind of approach to soulbuilding.

It twitches harshly as Freeda shines a small flashlight in its eyes ‒ then, after a short pause, it appears to deliberately keep twitching.

"Testing out its motor skills," Grynn says with a very pleased smile. The soul's eyes immediately flick to her face and it starts moving its mouth, still twitching around on the table, its elbows, head and feet banging harshly against the metal.

"Alright, it's going to damage itself at this rate." Pollard digs out the restraints they got for exactly this kind of situation and with Grynn's help he ties down the soul's arms and legs. Freeda holds its head in the meanwhile, to keep it from smashing its skull against the table.

When it's completely tied down they all take a small step back. Its muscles are still jerking around a bit, but it doesn't seem to be actively fighting against the bonds.

For a moment, they watch it soundlessly twist around, each of them probably feeling just a little bit repulsed as it starts trying out facial expressions, contorting its face into all kinds of grimaces.

Slowly the scientists peel their protective clothing away, now that the pod shut itself again and they're no longer exposed to the incubation solution.

"Well," Pollard finally begins and looks down at Freeda, "it kind of has your eyes."

"Hilarious." Freeda remains stoic as ever, but Grynn predictably begins to giggle.

The project might technically still be a failure, but the thing is moving and watching and aware of its surroundings, so they got at least a few things right. It's worth an exasperated chuckle or two.

The twitching on the operating table comes to a sudden halt. The soul turns its head toward them, watching as their laughter slowly dissipates. Then, from one moment to the next, its mouth stretches into a wide, stiff grin ‒ and remains that way.

Pollard stops smiling and clears his throat awkwardly. "Okay. Yeah. That's, that's not creepy at all."

With a shrug, Freeda turns just the tiniest bit in Grynn's direction. "It appears to have your smile, Grynn."

"Ugh." This might actually be the first time Pollard has ever seen Grynn genuinely uncomfortable. "It's got a ‒ a tooth gap. And the front teeth are crooked. There's your structural weakness."

"Really more a cosmetic one," Freeda disagrees. She pushes up her enormous round glasses and then walks right back in front of the table. Their creation now holds perfectly still, watching, even as Freeda pushes her still gloved fingers into its mouth to pry the jaw open. "It's just one crooked tooth. Shouldn't be a bother."

"We'll have to do a BAS scan soon," Pollard says, returning to the monitors and trying to ignore as best he can that the soul went right back to grinning as soon as Freeda's fingers left its mouth. "Tomorrow I'd say."

"Too bad we can't do it right now," Grynn mutters with a little gleam in her eyes. "I'm curious to see how well we actually managed to put it together. Seeing this now, I kind of feel we should have increased the stats a little before activation."

Pollard stares at Grynn and then throws his hands up in the air. "Come on, why is everyone getting motivated for this again? I thought we wanted to put this behind us. Run a test or two, write a little paper and then stuff it in a closet somewhere."

Grynn is not even really paying attention to him anymore, she actually started taking notes on her clipboard. "Come on yourself." She quickly points at the soul with her pen before going right back to writing. "This isn't what we wanted, but it's still interesting. We're not clear on how much this thing is actually able to learn. I wanna try and make it talk. Look at this, all new territory! Something like this has never been done before!"

"When you say it like that it sounds so much more epic than it actually is."

"SA-N5," Freeda suddenly addresses the soul. "Describe your current condition."

Grynn and Pollard exchange a quick look, raising an eyebrow each. "Er, I'm pretty sure it's incapable of speech at the moment," Pollard decides to state the obvious.

Freeda makes a quick gesture, brushing away his words as she would a disgusting spider that crawled up her coat sleeve. "Clearly. However, it might be capable of understanding. We may also be able to determine whether or not it can already produce words."

The soul keeps watching her, still grinning, and now begins to also open and close its mouth again, mimicking what it sees Freeda doing.

Freeda is now lost in lone-wolf-mode, where she just does whatever she wants and doesn't ask for anyone's input. She rummages through the cupboards and returns to the experiment with a handful of differently sized needles, magically modified for soul treatment.

"It doesn't appear to have any innate motivation to produce sound," she says.

Pollard immediately understands what she's doing as she takes the smallest needle and jams it through the translucent skin on its chest into the blue soul laying underneath.

The soul reacts to the needle prick by twitching violently and widening its eyes, but it remains silent.

Freeda takes the needle the next size up and stabs another point on the soul, causing pain without any actual damage. The heart shaped ball of magic convulses, its glow flickering for a second, but the body belonging to it still doesn't offer any other reaction than the imitation of surprise and confusion.

Pollard is losing his patience a bit and he reaches across the table and to grab the second largest needle. This is already taking much longer than he wanted it to and he promised his kid a bedtime story today.

Freeda at least doesn't interfere with his actions as he produces a pair of large tweezers from the drawer of soul treatment equipment and uses it to lift the soul a tiny bit ‒ just enough that it still remains inside the confines of its body. Pollard sets the tip of the needle to the very sensitive spot on the top middle of the soul, right at the lowest point between the two rounded crowns.

The needle has barely breached the slightly elastic "skin" of the soul as the body under him convulses violently, the restraints creaking ominously as they're being stretched to their limits. A hard, long wheeze escapes their creation's mouth, rising in pitch and almost emulating the sound of a voice.

Pollard breathes an exasperated sigh, adjusts his hold on the soul and pushes the needle in as far as he dares.

The scream erupting from the creation's mouth is a lot louder than expected. Luckily he manages to quickly retract the needle at the same angle as it entered, only milliseconds before the body starts thrashing and wailing in pain.

Grynn hastily joins them at the table and holds down its shins, Pollard grabs the forearms to press them down. His sensitive ears are folding back instinctively at the animalistic screams, but he still stares with fascination as a blue liquid collects in the corners of the soul's wide open, glazed eyes.

At some point, without either of them noticing, Freeda must have procured a stool from somewhere, for she now steps onto it and simply climbs on top of the operating table, sitting down on the soul's chest and pressing both hands on its mouth. The muffled screams continue but become less feral, interrupted by more hitching breaths and wheezing now, as it very slowly calms down from the shock.

"See?" Grynn shouts over the receding noises. "Tell me this isn't exciting!"

Pollard growls a little and doesn't look at her. He'll be damned if he ever admits it to her, but this does actually have his adrenalin flowing happily again. Maybe their official experiments really have been too cut and dried lately.

But he should still get home in time to read that story to his kid.

With a series of high pitched whines the soul finally goes slack, its head thumping quietly against the table once and then rolling sluggishly from side to side. The three of them let go gradually and Freeda hops down from the table, adjusting her lab coat and glasses.

The soul is slowly letting its eyes close more and more now, a thin sheen of perspiration on its forehead. The small hands with its round, stumpy fingers still twitch occasionally, clenched around the thin hospital gown. Pollard catches himself staring at the tiny pink fingernails and being very inappropriately reminded of how fascinated he had been with his first child's hands after his birth; how everything was so small and delicate and pudgy but somehow also functional at the same time. It ‒ had a certain charm to it.

He shakes his head with a start and clears his throat. Obviously he's far too tired if he's indulging in such unprofessional thoughts.

"So, it does have a functioning voice," he gets right back on track. "Might still be a struggle to make it use it with purpose instead of just instinctively."

"Yeah yeah, I said I wanted to make it talk," Grynn playfully warns him off. "Don't you go stealing my project goals now. Get your own."

Pollard just rolls his eyes. He watches with dwindling interest as Grynn and Freeda check the soul's vitals all over again, concluding that the stress of the start-up procedure and the aggressive treatment of the soul have exhausted its energy supply for the day. It's out cold now.

With all the important monitors attached and all three scientists equipped with a beeper in case of emergency, they wheel the table into the small adjacent observation room.

When Pollard finally gets home, his kid is fast asleep already, so instead of reading a bedtime story, he starts writing a little report of today's proceedings.

They woke up the thing. It grinned and screamed a bit and got tired. All in all, there's not much to say concerning either success or failure.

Start-up inconclusive, he jots down. Somehow, it's still more satisfying than reading "Peek-a-boo with Fluffy Bunny" for the tenth time.

* * *

SA-N5 has some trouble with words.

It knows what words are ‒ at least, it thinks it does. But making them is difficult, especially outside its own head to make others hear them. Written words are easier, somehow. There is a little tag bound to its wrist with its designation "SA-N5" written on it. It can read and understand that just fine, but thinking it in terms of words and sound is complicated.

Es-Ay-En-Five. That's long.

It decides to read it differently. Sa-n5. Sanfive. But the 5 looks a lot like the S, so it becomes Sans. That's easy to think.

There is some stuff Sans just knows but can't remember from where, like how to read, and some other things it remembers hearing the creators talk about while it was in the tank.

It doesn't know why it had to leave the tank. Now there are many new things it doesn't understand and many of them hurt.

But it does know that the creators were happy when it made loud noises at them, so when they come back, it makes loud noises again.

"Oh my fucking God!"

"Holy shit!"

They don't seem all that happy this time. Maybe it's not loud enough? Sans takes a breath and starts again. Make sure to smile! Smiling is nice.

"Why is it doing that!"

Like before, creator Freeda sits on top of Sans and stops the noise with her hands. That seems to be the appropriate procedure of these things.

"How unexpected." The noises from Freeda are not very loud, but Sans is sure that she is doing her best. "Is that an error in the learning pr— hmmpf!" Sans stops her noises with its own hands. Sans is glad it managed to greet one of its creators properly.

"What the hell, how did it even get its hands free?"

Oh. So the hands were supposed to stay in the bindings? It seems Sans misunderstood the task. And it tried so hard to overcome the obstacle and make the creators proud. It quickly puts the hands back where they belong.

"Great, it damaged itself." Creator Pollard looks at the spots on its hands that hurt, where the bindings chafed against the skin until something red and sticky came out. "It must have pulled at the restraints the whole night and actually loosened them. Look at this, the wrists are ‒ well, bleeding, I suppose. Like a human."

"It was supposed to be out cold for the night." That's creator Grynn. Sans can't see her, but it knows her voice. It knows all of their voices, even though they sounded a bit different with the walls of the tank between Sans and them. Why did Sans have to leave the tank? It was nice there. Nothing hurt.

But Sans is sure that hurting is necessary. The creators must know what they're doing.

"The beepers didn't go off, so there was no significant increase in energy output accompanying the increase in activity. Weird."

"Apparently it spent the entire night running through its learning program completely unsupervised." Freeda is nice to listen to. She never sounds disappointed or angry or ‒ anything. It's easy to understand. "Without complimentary input, it is bound to have come to a number of wrong conclusions. Hence the screaming."

She still sits on top of it and it hurts its chest. Sans starts to think that maybe hurting is just a part of everything.

Freeda leans forward until their faces are closer to each other and it can see her eyes through the glass on her face. "No screaming."

Is that a question? A statement? No screaming. She is asking why there is no screaming. Is screaming the loud noise? Words are so hard. Sans screams.

Her hand hurts the side of its face, then she holds up a finger. "Stop."

Sans misunderstood the task again. No screaming. Screaming is wrong. Sans stops and smiles.

Bobbing her head, Freeda climbs down. Writing noises are coming from Grynn, click-clack-scritch-scratch, Sans knows the sound. Pollard says words, but they are so quiet, they blend into each other. Mumble mumble. Maybe he finds words difficult too?

"So, what do we do about this?" Oh, now he speaks normal words again. "We should make sure that it doesn't keep learning things independently, its cognitive processes are not refined enough for that. There's a maximum on how much it'll be able to pick up, so we don't want it to clog its brain with messed up half-knowledge."

"We could just reduce its energy supply when it's alone." Grynn is still writing, writing and talking, doesn't it all mix in her head? Everything is mixing together in Sans' head right now. "Dial down its magic to half capacity or something, so it can't really 'think' about stuff while we're gone."

"Better than nothing, I suppose. Let's try it out."

Moving moving moving, monitor there, cable there, writing writing, words words words. Sans tries not to move, not to look, but it doesn't understand and then there's a needle and a tube, hands touching its arm and chest and Sans is not allowed to move around.

Then Grynn is finally there again, Sans likes her friendly smile and tries very hard to make its own just as wide. Pollard is on the other side, and both are looking down at the glowing thing in its chest. It must be very important, they always look at that.

Sans recognizes the thing that comes next, the long, shiny metal that's pushed into its chest, that moves around its soul. This hurt a lot last time, but it also made the creators happy and Sans folds its hands around the thin cloth on its body, holding on tight to remind itself not to scream.

The pain is different this time, sharp and short, not quite as bad ‒ but when it leaves... it takes something with it?

Something ‒ fades. Things turn gray, blurry.

Thoughts become more difficult.

Thoughts leave.

Sans ‒ forgets.

Sans is ‒

Empty.

* * *

The first time Sans woke up again, it had trouble breathing. It could hear talking all around but couldn't manage to process any of the words. Not until there was a hand back on its face, forcing it so suck in each breath through the nose, which became calming after what seemed like a long while.

Being "shut down" is necessary, Freeda says.

It's not dangerous. It makes Sans more useful.

Sans still really doesn't like it. The sensation of everything slipping away, of just lying and watching and not even caring about the pain, then suddenly coming back and realizing how weird that all was ‒ it's bad. It feels bad.

Sans gets it now, though: It doesn't matter what things feel like. The creators keep hurting Sans, so even though it feels wrong, pain must be a good thing. An okay thing, at the very least. Same with shutting down, then.

Maybe just pretend it's the tank? It's kind of similar. It's, well, it's both quiet. It's both ‒ hm. No, actually, the tank and shutting down are not very similar at all.

The tank was safe.

Sans isn't entirely sure what that word means, but it is the one word that pops into its head when it thinks of the tank. And the words were put there by the creators, that much it knows by now. They gave Sans a pile of knowledge and Sans was supposed to grow with it and make it more, but Sans stopped growing, so now they're angry and the knowledge isn't complete.

What Sans can do now, what it has to do now, is try and grow on its own as best it can. The creators want to help with that, so Sans has to listen to them, has to impress them, has to be good and smart and nice.

Grynn shows pictures, simple ones with bright colors and Sans is supposed to do something with that, but it doesn't quite know what. She speaks slowly, the same words over and over again, pointing to the pictures, but the pictures are just colors for Sans. It tries to touch the colors, Grynn slaps its hand away.

She gets angry after a few hours, the pictures go away and then she talks to Freeda a lot. It gets very loud and Sans is so confused, didn't they say screaming is bad? Why are the creators allowed to scream then?

"You fucking ruined it, the one time it voluntarily produced a sound you immediately shut it up again!" Grynn is walking around, heavy, big steps. "Now it won't even try!"

"Do you honestly believe it would have gone from screeching like an animal to forming actual words?" Even Freeda's voice is getting louder and Sans knows that's not good, that never happens, something is wrong. "That is very much not in the same category of cognitive processes. Have you considered that maybe it is your patience that is insufficient here?"

"It takes a kid a while to learn how to talk," Pollard says, so very, very carefully. "I'm, I'm not saying it's a kid, of course, I'm just saying that language is complicated and ‒ I don't know. It takes a while."

"It's not a child." Grynn is not grinning at all anymore and Sans looks away, presses its hands over its ears to make the sounds dull and nice like in the tank. "It's supposed to see a picture, hear a word and immediately connect the stimuli. That's how we built it."

"What part of 'this really didn't go as planned' do you still not understand?" And now Pollard is angry. That much Sans can still hear, even with the sounds all dulled. "What does it matter how we built it? Half of that didn't take anyway, so how about we work with what we've got?"

Holding its ears is not the same as the tank and Sans is slowly understanding the word "safe", because in the tank nobody could touch it. Now, even though it's blocking out the noise and pretending, Grynn can just rip its hands down and turn its head up so they have to look at each other. One of the pictures is back and Grynn points to it sharply. "House!"

It has a lot of reds and whites and some greens, Sans really likes the colors. What to do with the strange word, though? What's "house"? That isn't in the knowledge pile the creators put in its head.

Sans wants to touch the colors again, but it wasn't allowed the first time either, so it quickly sits on its hands and keeps looking at Grynn. Her teeth are making a little grinding sound.

"No, for fuck's sake, look at the picture!"

She turns its head again, shoves the picture closer. Her fingers in Sans' hair scratch and pull and hurt. "House." She says it so slowly this time that Sans barely recognizes it as the same word as before.

"You do know the definition of insanity?" Freeda's voice is almost back to normal, so that's good at least. "Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results?"

"As defined by some human who thought themselves especially clever," Grynn snorts derisively. "Wouldn't have expected you of all people to throw such narrow-minded garbage my way."

They talk and Sans is still thinking. House. House house house. House? It's something in the picture? The colors? The red triangle? Or the white rectangle? Which part of the picture is "house?"

Sans wants to do well, it really does, but this is so hard and its head feels like it's wobbling around on its neck, from one side to the other, everything turning around and blurring into each other. What happens if it doesn't figure this out? What happens if Sans can't be useful?

"Stop fidgeting and look at the house!" Grynn is getting really annoyed again. "Here." She traces her finger over the picture, over both the rectangle and the triangle. "House!"

Oh.

Oh!

The whole thing is a house!

Sans smiles really widely again. It understood! This is a house. It can save the word now and use it later when it needs it. It's learning new words, how useful! Sans quickly traces the outline of the house as well, too quickly for Grynn to snatch its hand away again, and nods to show it understands.

Grynn makes a loud, disgusted sound and shoves the picture against Pollard's chest. "This is pointless. Do me a favor and throw that for me."

Sans looks from one to the other, still happy that it solved the puzzle. Did it make the creators happy? It's a bit hard to tell right now. Pollard chuckles a little at least.

"I can't just throw paper without the appropriate context, you know. I have to be in the zone."

"Then what are you even good for?"

Why are they not sounding happy? When Sans screamed the first time, back when it was still a good thing, they got all excited and smily and loud. Now Grynn is standing up, her back to Sans, and makes unhappy little sounds. Pollard makes fun of her and Freeda doesn't care at all. But Sans solved it!

It raises its hand and points toward the picture, the one that Pollard is putting away on a counter now. They didn't understand that Sans understands, it thinks, moving its fingers frantically until they make little snapping noises. That seems useful, so Sans keeps doing it, snapping at the picture and smiling and nodding fiercely.

"Alright, it's going into overdrive or something." Pollard sighs and rubs his forehead. "Why is everything about this thing weird?"

"Probably because we're the ones who built it," Grynn grumbles unhappily.

Sans keeps pointing and snapping and grinning so vigorously that it's bouncing up and down on the table a little. The table starts creaking and moving just a bit.

"Yeah, okay, that's enough."

Freeda is getting one of the long metal things from a cupboard, Grynn and Pollard grab onto Sans' hands and feet and start to put the bindings on again. But ‒ but Sans was good! It understood! Why don't they understand that it understood?

Sans is not allowed to fight the bindings, but it's also supposed to be useful and make the creators understand that it is useful. That has to be more important than lying still, right?

It starts twisting its hands and feet, twitching back from the rough feeling of the restraints on its skin, rolling to the edge of the table as far as it can. The hands of the creators are much stronger than its own, but it keeps trying, keeps bending its head back to look in the direction of the picture.

"What the hell is even going on anymore?"

"Just keep it as still as possible, I'll shut it down."

No no no! No, Sans solved the task, Sans was good and useful, don't shut it down yet, it can learn more, it can ‒ it can ‒ the picture is a house, it's a house, Sans understands!

It slams its heels against the table, then its skull, making noise and pain, make them listen. How does it make the words leave its head, how can it make the creators hear?

"This is getting ridiculous." Pollard was holding its wrists but lets them go now. Just for a little bit, Sans' hands are free and it waves them around, grabs a white coat and pulls on it, its other hand meets something soft and Pollard makes a little wince as well.

Then, suddenly, its hands are twisted behind its back, Pollard's arms winding across its throat and the other around its chest. Sans can't move, Sans can't breathe, it tries to struggle but it just gets worse. Gasping for breath it bends its head back, trying to take the pressure off its throat, but the arm just gets tighter, follows its movements and bends its shoulders back more, pain pain pain, this isn't right, this isn't supposed to happen if Sans was good!

It doesn't see the needle coming, barely even feels it. A little tug, a little prick, the glow in its chest gets dimmer, then things start leaving.

Movement first. It feels its muscles go slack, its shoulder starts hurting so badly it wants to scream again, but then that leaves, too. Sans still feels the pain. Its body just doesn't care anymore.

Everyone lets go, everything goes gray, they talk again and it listens, but then instantly forgets.

It doesn't want to shut down, it doesn't want to, it wants to stay awake, it wants to stay itself! Its chest constricts harshly, the little blue heart feeling smaller and smaller and Sans holds onto the feeling, keeps the thoughts for as long as it can, because everything else is going away and this is all there is.

This is all Sans is.

Its eyes grow hot and itchy with each thought that leaves, its breath more hitched and shallow when it loses its grip on everything.

Colors, white, red, green ‒ gone.

Pictures, sounds, words ‒ gone.

House ‒ gone.

Sans.

No. No, it can't lose that word. It's too important, that word is everything, that word is, that word is _him_ and he can't lose it!

Sans is ‒

Sans ‒

That word has to stay. He can't forget that one. But it still slips, grows fuzzy, he feels himself starting to not even care anymore. Everything else is gone already, why should this one matter so much? It's just a name. A designation.

Sans ‒ gone.

He lies quietly, breathes, hurts. The name is gone.

A last thought twists around in his head, he barely catches it right before it leaves and turns to dust.

 _I hope I remember my name tomorrow._


	3. A New Thing

**A New Thing**

Waking up again from being shut down doesn't stop being scary.

Maybe it's a little stupid. Nothing really bad happens, he always wakes up and remembers everything within seconds. But, well, he is defective, so maybe this is just something he can't help.

Those first few seconds after being woken are terrible each time, those seconds during which he becomes aware of all the things he forgot: His name, his creators, all the words he knows, everything he learned ‒ It doesn't feel like those are things he should just forget.

He can't avoid being shut down for the time when the creators are gone, but if he is very good and makes the creators happy, they sometimes stick around longer and come back earlier. If he fights them when they start shutting him down, then they're unhappy and frustrated and don't really want to wake him up again. So if he wants to keep waking up, he has to always do as he is told.

It's very hard, though. The creators are not happy very often and their tasks are extremely difficult. Most of the time, Sans just doesn't understand what they want from him. It has been weeks since they woke him up and they still show him the pictures every day, the house and the tree and the dog and all the others. Sans knows all the words now, but obviously he's still not doing what they want him to do with them ‒ or they still don't understand that he already understands.

He thinks he could make them understand if they paid a bit more attention to him, because curiously enough, even though they always make him do things and look at his monitors and measure the waves his brain makes, they barely ever look at him. They only do that if he does something they didn't expect, and when that happens they quickly make him stop doing it.

He gestures to the pictures, they pin down his hands.

He tries to get up from the table to try and move around on two legs like them, they catch and restrain him.

He shows them the label on his wrist, the one with the letters he can read, and they push it out of the way so they can keep doing their tests.

Pollard knows best how to hold him down, in a way that makes moving hurt so bad that Sans immediately stops trying. Even when he doesn't move it sometimes still breaks something, like the first time he fought against being shut down and Pollard twisted his arms so much that the shoulder just popped right out of its socket. They put it back in while he was shut down, so at least he didn't care about the pain then.

Grynn doesn't hurt him on purpose, he thinks, or only when she gets really angry. Her fingernails are sharp against the left side of his skull ‒ always the left, because her right hand is her favorite hand ‒ and he has many scratches that hurt and itch and sometimes ooze the red fluid.

Freeda is the easiest to predict. She only ever hurts him when he deserves it and even then it's mostly just a little slap. Sometimes she puts her hands over his mouth and nose when he's afraid and close to screaming, that part Sans doesn't like. But he understands why she does that; when she takes her hands away again, he is always too busy breathing to still move around much or make any noises.

Sometimes, when they get distracted by other stuff, when they just talk to each other or write reports or work on different projects while he lies there on his table ‒ sometimes, he thinks it would be better if it was always like that. It makes him feel safer.

But every time he thinks that, he quickly feels bad about it. They try so hard to help him and he doesn't even appreciate it. So as soon as he catches himself thinking like that, he bangs his fists against the table or pulls at the restraints to make them punish him right away. After all, they can't hear what he thinks, so it's only right he somehow lets them know when he was bad.

They wouldn't be able to make him better otherwise.

* * *

Considering how important it apparently is that he is never alone, it confuses him quite a bit when he wakes up one day and no one is there with him.

When he is shut down, only the creators can wake him up again ‒ usually. They have the syringe with the blue stuff after all ‒ they take it out of him, he shuts down, they put it back in, he wakes up.

As soon as the panic of having forgotten his name and the relief of remembering it again are wearing off, he looks around the small, white room he always sleeps in. It's completely empty. The ceiling is a long, long way up, but the single light bulb hanging there is still glaring enough to make his eyes itchy and watery.

Maybe they figured out a way to wake him from afar and they're on their way to him now. They know he learns wrong things when they leave him alone and they don't make mistakes, so this has to be happening on purpose.

While he waits, he starts noticing the blue glow from his soul and looks down. The light itself is not really unusual, his soul always glows a bit. But it's somehow stronger? Not really brighter or anything, it's always a very deep blue, but the light reaches a lot farther than it normally does. Mainly, it just feels stronger.

 _Sans_ feels stronger. Huh.

This must be a new test, he decides. They're never very good with instructions, or maybe Sans isn't very good at following them, but he has definitely grown used to just trying out the first thing that seems plausible. If it's wrong, they let him know.

So, they woke him up, made his soul stronger somehow, and left him alone in his tiny room. The most plausible task he can take away from this is that he has to get out of the room. Surely they're waiting quietly outside and measuring the time he needs to complete the task.

And he has been lying here thinking for who knows how many minutes! He really needs to hurry then, make up for the time he already lost.

The bindings first. They're really tight now, ever since he managed to slip out of them that first time when he wasn't supposed to. He had the whole night to work at it back then, but he can't know how much time there is now, so he can't wear them down carefully. Instead, he just decides to start with the left hand, leans all the way to the right as far as he can and pulls.

The bindings creak quietly and the table joins in for a bit. Sans' arm is shaking, his wrist starts hurting, but he twists it in one direction and the other, curls in his fingers and bends them as far as he can. He catches himself making tiny noises, a labored breath and a painful wince and he really hopes they can't hear that outside the room.

It doesn't take long for him to figure out the problem. It's the thumb, no matter what he does it's always in the way. He has to somehow ‒ fold it away.

Sans quickly shakes out his hand a bit, then he tucks the thumb in as far as he can, folding the other fingers around it. He turns the hand until the troublesome knuckle is lying flat on the table. With a sharp intake of breath, he leans back again, pulls as far as he can and then simultaneously presses the hand against the table.

It already hurt to just pull on his hand against the restraints, but now it gets much worse. He is used to it, he hurts all the time, but somehow this is different, this is him doing that to himself and his body really wants him to stop. Still, he knows that if he stops, he won't be able to bring himself to start again, so he keeps breathing, keeps pulling, keeps pressing down on his knuckles.

With a sudden snap, the bone finally bends out of the way and Sans screams, even though he knows he isn't supposed to. It's short and small, just one little scream, then he harshly swallows all the other sounds that want to follow, bites down on his tongue and pushes breath after breath through his nose.

His face is wet and clammy, especially under his eyes, which leak an odd, salty fluid. He finds himself slamming his other hand and his feet on the table, making little hurts to take his mind off the big one.

Concentrate now! This is good, this means he made it, he can keep going now. He just needs to concentrate.

Very, very carefully he moves his hand, the thumb dragging along listlessly. When he has to move it around to fit it through the binding, his stomach turns and twists, pushing bile up his throat and he hastily swallows, again and again until the feeling slowly leaves.

Loosening the ties without a functioning thumb is a lot more difficult than he anticipated, but he makes it work after a few attempts. When he's free, he lets his feet fall to the left over the edge of the table and his upper body swings along almost by itself until he's sitting up.

Reaching the door is his next challenge. It just now occurs to him that he has to leave the table for that. He ‒ he never left the table before. The one time he tried jumping off, Grynn immediately caught him and put him back before he even hit the ground.

Feeling so queasy doesn't help him much in coordinating his limbs and formulating a plan, so before he can decide against it, he just lets himself tilt forward until gravity does all the work for him.

Gravity, he thinks, as he lands on the floor with a painful thud. Another thing he apparently knows about without knowing how he knows that. That was a lot of knowing in one sentence. Are his thoughts becoming a little weirder than usual?

Preoccupied with the odd ramblings about knowing and words and gravity in his own mind, he doesn't really notice how his body manages to get into a sitting position on the floor. He does get stuck a little at that point, though, with his legs tucked in under himself and a big question mark in his mind about the whole 'standing up' thing. How does one go about doing that?

All his muscles are already shaky from all the unusual movement, it really doesn't feel like his legs could carry all the rest of him around. Still, he tries. He pushes himself up and gets as far as kneeling upright, before he falls forward again and just barely catches himself with his good hand.

That ‒ that could work, though. Experimentally, he tries crawling a little, using the heel of his left hand as well, carefully keeping the thumb out of the way. The pain is dulling a little, or he's getting used to it.

And the door is closed. Of course.

Sans sits down heavily in front of it and stares up at the doorknob. He is too small to reach it, even if he could manage to stand up. He's pretty sure it's at least not locked, the creators never use a key when they open and close it. The doors to the laboratory itself, those are locked with a passcode and everything. But this door he could open, if he could only reach up.

Thinking hard, he taps the fingers of his right hand absently against his chest, where his soul is still glowing stronger than ever, pulsing quietly in time with his breathing. It feels weird. Mainly because there is suddenly feeling there. Before now, Sans only ever felt his soul when the creators were moving it around or sticking it with needles. The rest of the time it was just a glowing thing without any sensation at all.

Now it feels ‒ crackly. Like there are sparks spraying in his chest and moving through the rest of his body. It doesn't really hurt, but it doesn't quite feel right, either. Now, as he is still staring at the doorknob and wishing it would just turn by itself, the sparks are flying more swiftly, making his limbs twitch. There is a rapid pulsing in his ears and on his face, his lips and eyelids quivering uncontrollably.

He shuts his eyes tightly and presses his hand on his chest.

 _~ting_

The door swings open.

* * *

Sans decides not to question these things. He knows about the word 'magic,' though he isn't sure what exactly it applies to. It's somehow a part of almost every little bit of knowledge he has in his mind, about how monsters work, how science works, how the world works. Every time he thinks about one of these things a little harder, looks a little more closely at the knowledge he has and asks 'why?' ‒ every time he reaches a point where the answer is simply 'magic.'

It's a bit unsatisfying, to be honest.

Whatever, the door is open, Sans passed the test.

He's relieved but weirdly tired, and because of this, it takes him a while to notice that it's still completely silent. Shouldn't the creators be talking to each other by now? After a few strengthening breaths, he lifts his head and looks around.

The lab is empty. No one is waiting for him, no one is taking notes about his process. It's dark, the only light source being the thin ray of light falling through the open door of his room.

Sans sits in indecision for a moment. This whole experience is just becoming more odd with every second. By now he's starting to think that something actually went wrong. Did the creators maybe not plan this after all? Did he just leave his room without permission?

How did he wake up, then? If it wasn't the creators that woke him ‒

This is really starting to hurt his head. It's the middle of the night, his thumb is dislocated, his soul is sparking and he is doing things he isn't supposed to be doing. For a second, his soul vibrates more intensely in a sudden burst of fear. He is doing things he isn't supposed to be doing!

And nobody knows.

If nobody knows, nobody can punish him.

He ‒ he probably should be punished, though. The right thing to do now is most likely to just go back to his room, do nothing and wait for the creators to come back. When they see him awake, they'll know what he did. They'll make everything right again.

He should stop here, he thinks, as he slowly shuffles forward into the lab. He should not do even more things he isn't allowed to do, he thinks, as he grabs the handles of some cupboards to his left and slowly pulls himself up on two feet. _He should really stop doing the exact opposite of what he's thinking_ , he thinks, as he can't help but giggle a bit about the feeling of standing up.

He tries to lift his feet and make them carry him forward, the way he knows walking is supposed to work, but he can't quite figure it out and ends up just stomping his feet a little.

With an annoyed huff, he lets go of the handles and goes back to crawling, which is way easier and faster. Everybody should just move around like this. Really, why do they make things needlessly complicated all the time.

If his thumb wouldn't still hurt so much whenever it touches anything, this might be even faster. Still, he is moving. On his own! His soul feels kind of bigger and brighter at the thought and Sans stops for a moment.

It doesn't take him long to reach his goal, a certain drawer where he knows the creators keep a lot of things for tests. He's too small to look inside, so he just sticks his hand in, rummages around in it blindly and tries to close his hand around something. The things slip away a few times, until his fifth or sixth attempt, when he finally manages to grab something and pull it out of the drawer.

It's a piece of paper, one of those that Pollard prints out and likes to throw sometimes when he's angry. So that's what paper feels like! Sans runs his fingers over the white material and carefully saves the information. The word 'savor' tries to make its way into that sentence, but he doesn't understand that one and therefore ignores it.

With his soul beating loudly in his chest and sending sparks through his body and mind, he looks around at all the surfaces he can see, searching for a very specific tool that he has been curious about ever since waking up from the tank. There are quite a lot of them in the lab, but sadly none of them in a place where he could reach them.

Sans sits down, leaning against the drawer and the piece of paper carefully laid out over his legs. He starts tapping his fingers against his chest again. Now that he's doing it more consciously, he notices how his fingers actually sink in a little bit, right above his soul where the creators usually push the needles through.

The farther he pushes his fingers below the elastic, see-through skin on his chest, the more sparks he can feel in his soul. It makes his eyes burn a little and his limbs shake, and something in his mind flares up in the background, making him realize that he should probably be able to do this by just thinking instead of touching. But for now, this way is a lot less complicated.

His fingers are still mostly outside his own chest before the sparks are flying through his mind again, more and brighter than before. He is too distracted by the burning feeling to clearly hear the little _~ting_ this time, but what he does hear is the clattering of something falling to the floor next to him and rolling around for a short moment.

When he opens his eyes and sees the pen lying next to him on the floor, he breaks out into a huge grin.

Sans picks it up and then puts the paper flat on the ground. There are complicated black squiggles on it, lots of numbers and charts. He can kind of read the words, but they're all very big words and there are no pictures to explain them, so he doesn't really get anything out of this. Shrugging, he turns the paper over.

Grynn often writes with pens like these, he thinks and looks at the little shiny tool in his hand. The way she holds them looks difficult and Sans doesn't try for very long to copy her before he just grabs the pen in a fist and clicks the top with his forehead. That switches the pen on, he thinks.

He isn't allowed to make noises or too many gestures, so he has to communicate with the creators some other way. Maybe if he writes some of the words he learned for them, they'll finally understand. House was the first one he learned, so it feels right to start with that.

It should be really easy, he's always known letters and spelling, after all. Even though it's one of the words he can't picture a correct spelling for, most likely because he learned it after the tank. But it has to do with sound, right? It sounds like 'how' and he knows how to spell that, so he just has to add an S and it should be done. Hows. Yes, that seems right. Or wait, maybe it's a Z, so howz? Hm. He'll try them both. Sans presses the pen down on the paper and writes the first letter.

That ‒ oh. Now that doesn't look at all like what he was trying to do. The lines are supposed to be straight and small. Why did they get so long and wobbly?

Biting his lip in concentration, he tries again right below his failed attempt. Even though he's moving the pen more slowly this time, it still kind of slips away and runs across the paper however it wants. Frowning, he leans back and tilts his head thoughtfully, looking at the mess of wobbly lines. The pen must be broken, or maybe it's the paper, because this isn't right at all.

Though, if he squints a bit, it does kind of look like an H. Maybe if he just adds the other letters as well it'll become clearer.

The O is an even bigger failure. No matter how hard he tries, he can't make the line go all the way around and connect back to itself again, it always ends up somewhere above or below the starting point. And everything wobbles! Why won't the lines do what he wants?

Frowning and scoffing in frustration, he quickly scratches the pen all over the badly drawn letters, until they're covered in a mess of black lines. Then he keeps going for some reason, just draws all over the paper in big, circling motions.

Somewhere along the way, it makes him lose the frown. After a while, he lies down on his stomach, his feet dangling in the air above him. If he squints a bit at the mess of lines on the paper, that part right there looks kind of like a dog. He should add more lines to that, maybe color it in with all black so he has to squint less to see it.

His soul grows bigger again, like before when he was crawling on his own. It makes a new word float into his head.

Fun.

When he is done and puts the pen away, he suddenly realizes he was smiling this whole time. How odd. He didn't even consciously decide to do that. Must be part of that new fun-thing he discovered here. Very carefully, he straightens out the now slightly crinkled paper and leans back a little to inspect it.

It's ‒ well. It's not at all what he wanted to achieve with all this, actually. Not even close. But maybe he can still use it? It is a picture of a dog, after all, one he made himself, and 'dog' is one of the words they taught him. Maybe that's enough to show the creators he isn't completely failing all of their tests. It's worth a shot, right?

Slowly, he pushes himself back up into a sitting position. Everything feels very sore now, especially his thumb. Sans reaches up to the drawer again and slips the paper back into it. They should see it right away like this.

Crawling back into his little room isn't half as much fun as crawling out of it. He is tired now, he hurts everywhere, his head is heavy and his soul is shrinking again, still crackling a bit. When he pokes at his chest to provoke it into sparking, it does so with a shrill lightning bolt of pain through his head. It leaves him shaking and gasping for air, but it also makes him float back onto the table, where he slips his hands and feet into the restraints.

He just about notices that he forgot to put the pen back where he found it and is still grasping it tightly in his right hand. For some reason, he turns his hand around so that the pen is hidden beneath his arm. If he could keep this ‒ He doesn't really know where the thought comes from, but he thinks if he could keep this pen ‒ it might make him a little bit happy.

* * *

Pollard is the first to enter Lab 4 this morning after yet another all-nighter. He is so tired that he can't even hold his mug straight, leaving a trail of tiny coffee drops behind on the floor. He just has to power up SA-N5, take a few basic readings and then shut it down again before he can finally go home and catch a few hours of sleep.

The soul wakes up with an ugly grimace today. His quick examination reveals a dislocated thumb and some bumps and bruises on its head and knees. They did have to get pretty rough with it the last time they shut it down, so they probably just overlooked that. He pops the bone back in and refastens the restraints.

When he opens his drawer with the printed results of various scans, he lets out a resigned sigh. One of his kids left him a present on the back of a document, apparently. He should really stop taking important papers home with him, this happens way too often.

He does feel a bit guilty for not properly appreciating the terrible doodle of a ‒ tree? Whatever it is, he can't file it as part of his report like this, so he quickly folds it and drops it in the trashcan. Wasn't all that important anyway.

SA-N5 starts making soft whining noises behind him, so before that can escalate he quickly shuts it down again.

* * *

Before Grynn enters the CORE facilities these days, she always straps on her breathing mask. It's not mandatory ‒ yet ‒ which she thinks is incredibly stupid. Magic Emissions are reaching extremely high levels everywhere in Underground, but especially in places like the CORE, where thousands of monsters work everyday in close proximity to each other and pump the air full of volatile magic simply by breathing.

It wouldn't be a problem on the surface. Grynn read somewhere that humans even do something similar, only they release carbon dioxide when breathing, while monsters release superfluous magical particles. But here, under the mountain, these otherwise harmless particles can't evaporate properly, so they build up and fuse with each other and fill up the huge underground caverns bit by bit.

It fucks with everything. For months now it's gotten progressively worse: Monsters lose control of their magic, equipment malfunctions everywhere, magically infused technology short circuits on a monthly schedule, some structures even collapsed ‒ in a few isolated, extreme cases, monsters have actually died simply from absorbing too much discarded magic into their system.

Grynn would be less pissed off about it if the science department hadn't been warning people about exactly this kind of scenario for decades, but because it hadn't been noticeable enough yet, they never received enough funding for researching a solution ‒ not until a few years back, when Gaster basically chained himself to the king's throne and refused to leave without an official permission to try and fix this.

At least, that's what Grynn heard happened. Knowing how insistent her boss can be, she kind of believes it.

It's an offcial crisis now, the ME crisis, and their team is the one leading the research on it. Which mainly means analyzing the two human souls. It's a shame those experiments are so closely regulated by King Asgore himself, who is kind of a wuss when it comes to taking calculated risks. So every once in a while, he will put a stop to a promising idea, simply out of some stupid safety concern.

They've reached that point again today, it seems, because Freeda and Pollard are already walking towards her when she enters the corridor leading to Laboratory 1 ‒ her mask back to just dangling around her neck, since unlike the entrances and housing areas of the facility, the labs and the actual Core are of course properly isolated.

Her colleagues look tired and annoyed, even Freeda, so that's a bad sign. Grynn stops and sighs loudly. "Again?"

"Yeah." Pollard scratches his ear. "Dr. Gaster just left to try to get us the permit. We're supposed to wait here."

"He did say it would just be a few hours," Freeda shrugs, then she inconspicuously takes the lead and walks in the direction of Lab 4.

"You don't actually want to keep working?" Pollard asks annoyed. "Come on, we have a few hours to take a break, maybe catch some sleep? I heard sleep is good. Not that I can really attest to that, of course, I haven't tried it in quite a while."

"Why are you even here if all you do is complain about your job?" Grynn knows she should probably just let this go ‒ they're all tired, after all ‒ but she needs an outlet every once in a while and Pollard is just too easy of a target. "Nobody's forcing you to tag along, you know. You can go to the break room any time you want, just don't start sulking when we make progress without you."

He lets out a bitter laugh. "Progress? On what? Name one of our projects that's even remotely promising right now."

She turns away with a huff and he spreads his arms in a gesture of insufferable triumph. "Thanks for proving my point. Actually, I'm pretty sure I could name ten projects off the top of my head that we'd have every reason to terminate. They're just sitting there wasting resources."

Grynn sighs. She hates it when he's right.

He is, though, they're really not doing anything productive at all in Lab 4. There is the Magic Absorption Implant Prototype 3, which melts the second they turn it on; there is the Soul Containment Field Generator, which Gaster made obsolete by doodling diagrams of a better alternative on the sleeve of his lab coat last week.

There is project SA-N5, which they haven't turned on in almost three weeks. The last few times they did, it immediately got a magic overload and just seized uncontrollably until they shut it down again, undoubtedly a result of the general magical pressure building up in the CORE.

With another deep sigh, Grynn stops in her tracks, making Pollard trip over his own feet in his effort not to collide with her. "You're right, actually," she says, even though directing those words at Pollard makes her mouth taste like vomit. "This is pointless. I'm gonna go and catch some shut-eye in the break room."

Pollard nods, crossing his arms and not looking nearly as pleased with himself as she thought he would. Mostly, he just looks resigned.

It's a bit like a stab in the gut when even Freeda follows them to the elevators after a few seconds. If Freeda doesn't see a reason to keep working at their personal projects anymore ‒ well, it really just means that they stuffed an entire laboratory full of useless garbage.

Guess they really can't do anything worthwhile on their own.

Sans is a lot more productive on his own, lately.

He got to keep the pen. Or, well, that's how he likes to think about it, even though he knows it's just because he's hiding it from the creators. He sometimes uses it to get out of the restraints when he wakes up on his own.

When they are the ones to wake him up, it really hurts. Much, much worse than before. They inject the blue magic into his soul again to wake him up and the gray void in his head is replaced by all white, searing and hot and burning. He can't breathe through it, can't even make any noise; his soul pulses and stretches in his chest, so much that it rips on the surface and spills blue liquid into his body. It gets into his mouth, his eyes, leaks sluggishly out of his nose and ears.

When he makes it through that, his mind goes blank and his body slack. Then he sits there and hurts his lungs with every breath, tries to see but burns his eyes with every ray of light.

The parts in between, when he wakes up on his own, are still mostly bad and he simply stays where he is, waiting to fall asleep again. But after a few times of doing that, it gets a little better, a little less painful, and his head clears enough for him to use the pen as a lever on the restraints. Once he's out, he can spend the whole night teaching himself new things.

That's his plan now. He's too dumb for the way the creators teach, so the next best thing is to be his own teacher. Sans is going to learn as much as he can on his own and then one day, maybe, when things get a bit better again and he learns how to handle the pain, he can show them all the things he knows.

He already taught himself how to walk. It involved a lot of stomping in place and holding on to any kind of handle-like contraption in his vicinity, but now he got so far that he can walk from one end of the lab to the other twice without having to sit down.

He's learning new words from the documents and drawing works a lot better now as well. He practiced until he could hold the pen the same way Grynn does.

He can write "Hows" now. With an S. It looks stupid with a Z.

And he made some pretty good dog pictures, too.

Of course, he doesn't put them back in the drawer anymore, that was obviously the wrong thing to do. At the end of the night, when he gets too tired to keep learning things, he folds up all his pieces of paper he drew on and puts them in the trashcan. Maybe some day, the creators will remember to look there too, and they will see that he did things right and that he's trying.

Though, they really don't come by very often anymore.

Tonight, Sans is sitting near the exit door, leaning against the wall and rolling the pen between his fingers as he reads through a document he already read a hundred times, searching for anything new he can learn from it. It's not really fun. Actually, it's making him more tired.

Just as he decides to maybe call it a night, a sound interrupts the silence of the lab. Sans freezes, his eyes darting around the room hastily and his soul beating loudly in his chest. This never happened before. It's always just him making noises in here at night and he tries very hard to keep those as quiet as possible.

Not that what he's hearing now is loud, exactly. It's a small ‒ ticking sound?

Suddenly, he jolts upright from his position on the floor, standing up on shaking legs the moment he figures it out. It's coming from behind the door. It's the sound of someone typing in the passcode on the keypad.

Someone's coming.

Sans has absolutely no time to react. Only a second after he understands what's going on, the door right next to him slides open. In a moment of panic, he falls back against the wall and wraps his arms around his head, eyes screwed shut. He knows they can still see him, of course he knows that, but somehow it doesn't quite feel like that if he isn't looking.

A small gasp sounds right next to him, followed by a high-pitched "Oh!"

That doesn't really sound like any of the creators.

And ‒ nothing else is happening. There is a long pause, only broken after a few seconds by the sound of two very small footsteps. It feels like there is movement right in front of him and he cowers down a little bit more. Of course he would be punished for all of this one day. He was so engrossed in learning more and more that he forgot he was doing forbidden things. Whatever comes next, he really deserves it.

"Um... h-hello."

Something's not right. That's definitely a voice, but it's so small. The creators don't talk like this.

"Are you okay?"

He's afraid, his hands are shaking and his breathing is getting funny ‒ but suddenly, he's also curious. This is not going down the way he thought it would. If it did, he would already be in a lot of pain right now. Slowly, he lowers his arms just a bit and blinks hesitantly.

There is... _something_ standing in front of him.

It's small, like him, but it's not creator Freeda. It's something new. Something completely new!

It has a round, yellow face and three big spikes of hair on its head. It looks like him and the creators, somehow, though different in the details. Just like Pollard doesn't look like Grynn and Grynn doesn't look like Freeda, but they all look kind of similar with their arms and legs and heads. His own arms fall down to his side entirely as the wondrous questions begin piling up in his head. Could this really be another monster? He didn't know there was another monster!

Now that he's looking at it and he isn't shaking in fear anymore, it starts smiling hesitantly. Sans' soul makes a loud beat and he eagerly smiles back, as wide and friendly as he can. The monster leans back a little, maybe surprised? But then they give a tiny giggle and press a hand to their mouth. "Oh. Um. Hi!"

They don't seem mad at all, as far as Sans can tell. They're still smiling and now leaning back towards him a bit. They seem to really know what they're doing, so Sans mimics them and leans forward as well, just a little. Now their faces are closer and they can stare right at each other.

"Uh. Hi." They do repeat words a lot. Maybe they're still learning as well. "I-I'm Alphys. What's your name?"

Sans straightens his shoulders a bit. Back to testing.

He heard that word before, Alphys, but only ever had a vague idea of what it meant. She's better than him at talking and she was allowed outside the lab, so she must be more similar to the creators than to him.

Slowly, he bends down to pick up one of the papers, all the while looking back and forth between his goal and Alphys, to make sure what he's doing is allowed. She still isn't angry or annoyed or indifferent ‒ she just watches him curiously.

He is so glad now that he got a lot of practice. Crouching down, he quickly writes his name on the paper, the way he likes to think it.

"sans."

The first S should be taller, he knows that, but he likes it better this way.

When he gets back up, he shoves the paper in Alphys' direction, even though he meant to just hold it up for her instead of slapping it against her chest. For only a split second he is worried, until she giggles again and takes the page without getting angry at all.

"Sans? Is that right?"

She read it! She understood it, he wrote it right, it worked! Sans has to bite his tongue to keep from squealing, but he can't stop himself from jumping up and down a few times, grinning and involuntarily clapping his hands.

Alphys laughs. "O-oh, it's right, then? Hi Sans. Nice to meet you."

Something about this makes Sans want to cry, like all the happy stuff inside of him needs to get out somehow. But he quickly presses the heels of his hand to his eyes until they don't itch that much anymore and the tight ball of happiness in his chest doesn't feel quite that much as if it's about to explode.

"U-um," Alphys starts again, her eyes traveling from his face to his chest and back up again, "is your soul... alright? Is it supposed to look like that?"

That's two questions at once with two different answers. It doesn't feel like his soul is alright, in fact he's pretty sure there is a lot wrong with it. But he also thinks that it's actually supposed to look the way it looks, all blue and visible unlike the creators'. He decides to nod in answer to the second question.

She doesn't look convinced, but also not as if he made a mistake.

Alphys looks around the laboratory like she's searching for something. "Are you here with your parents? No one's allowed in here, I think." Her face changes color a little, from yellow to pinkish. "I- I mean, I shouldn't be here either ‒ I just wanted to explore a little."

She leans forward again, lowers her voice and Sans eagerly puts his head closer to hers to listen carefully. "We were supposed to visit grandma, but I sneaked out when she fell asleep."

Oh, now he remembers where he heard her name before! He holds out his hand, snapping his fingers impatiently and luckily she understands right away and gives him back the paper. Sans crosses out his name, just so it won't become confusing, and writes "Freeda" underneath.

Alphys nods excitedly when she reads it. "Yes, that's my grandma! You know her?"

Sans nods too.

"A-awesome! She always talks about work so much, I just wanted to see what it looks like." She puts her hand to her mouth again and pretend-whispers, "I saw her type her code in at the entrance and I memorized it. That's how I opened the door." Shuffling her feet a bit, she shyly scratches the back of her head. "I'm, I'm good with numbers."

She seems good with everything, Sans thinks, still smiling widely at her. And she's nice about it, too. Sans likes her.

"So... I guess you don't talk, huh? Are you ‒ are you sick?" She pulls lightly on the edge of his sleeve. "That's what people in hospitals wear. Are they trying to heal you here?"

Healing means to fix something that's broken. Sans supposes that pretty much is what they're trying to do to him, so he nods.

Alphys looks a bit sad suddenly and Sans quickly waves his hands around, worried that he did something wrong. She seems to understand, because she smiles again, just a little, and puts her hands up as well. "O-oh, no, don't worry, I'm not upset. It's just, it's a bit sad, you know? Will you get better?"

Will he get better? Maybe. He thinks he got a little better already. But nodding would be wrong, because that means definitely Yes, and shaking his head for No would probably not be right either. He glances around nervously and feels himself starting to sweat a bit. Oh no. He doesn't know how to answer that one. He's failing again. And he was doing so well, too!

Suddenly, her hand is on his shoulder, lightly tapping him there. It ‒ doesn't hurt at all. "I-it's alright. You'll be fine."

He'll be fine?

"Hey, I bet it's really boring in here on your own, hm?"

How does she know?

"Do you ‒" She looks around warily, starting to whisper again, "do you want to come explore with me? All the grown-ups are on break or gone home already, nobody will know." And she points behind her at the open door.

Explore. Leave the lab. A swooshing sound fills his ears for a moment, his neck grows hot and his hands cold. He could leave. That's ‒ he's pretty sure that's the most forbidden thing he could possibly do in his life ever.

He has to do it.

Before he can decide against it ‒ though he really doesn't think he will ‒ he nods. Alphys grins and with a small excited hop, she takes his hand in hers and pulls him with her.

* * *

The room outside the lab is really long and it makes Sans think the word 'corridor.' The lights actually have a kind of green tint to it that makes the floor and walls look murky gray-greenish and it's very ugly.

Alphys says it's "spooky" and "cool" and she really knows a lot about words, so he believes her.

"I'm kind of glad I found you," she whispers to him, as they pass one closed door after another, the noise of her slightly squeaky shoes and his naked feet the only regular sounds in the dark corridor. "I was l-losing my nerve a bit, to be honest. B-but, with the two of us together, this will be fun!"

She clenches the hand that isn't holding his into a fist and pumps it toward the ceiling, her eyes shimmering excitedly. "We should uncover some s-secrets! There are always secrets to uncover in spooky places, especially at night."

She knows a lot, Sans is starting to feel kind of small and unimportant. Not that he doesn't always feel like that, but ‒ it's different with the creators. He wants to impress them so they don't terminate him. He wants to impress Alphys because he likes her and maybe then she'll like him too?

That sounds extremely stupid. Quickly, he stops thinking about that and slows down to write on the paper he took with him. He has to let go of her hand for that, which is a little sad, but he concentrates on writing to stop all the odd thoughts and feelings that won't leave him alone.

"Sea crit," he writes, and holds it out to her curiously. She has to look at it and then at him for a while to understand this time, but when she does her face lights up excitedly.

"Oh, y-you mean secret! It's a question, right? About what kind of secret?" He nods. "C-can I?" She gesturing to the pen and paper and Sans hesitates for a few seconds. "I'll give them back, promise."

It's weird to let go of the pen, he spent so much time protecting it from the creators, keeping it hidden in his hand and under his arm, day and night. But she said she'd give it back and Sans wants to believe her.

Right next to his word, she writes another and draws a wiggly line and a dot, then immediately gives both pen and paper back to him.

"This is how you spell it. I'm in school now, so I learn how to spell things right. That's a question mark," she explains. "If you put it after a word, it becomes a question."

Sans studies all of this and copies the sign a few times, then writes "secret" and puts an extra big and beautiful question mark behind it. When he holds up the paper for her to see, she quietly claps her hands.

"Yes, very good!" She snatches the paper back and this time, Sans doesn't worry at all about getting it back. When she gives it to him to look at again, it says "A+" next to his writing.

"That's the best grade you can get," she eagerly explains as he looks at it with wide eyes. "I get these all the time, too, and it means you're good and perfect and people only t-t-tease you about that b-because they're jealous."

Sans feels his mouth hanging open, but he doesn't bother to close it again. His fingertips trail over the lines of the A+ as if on their own accord.

This is proof that he did something right. That he did good. It makes his throat close up a little. If he can show this to the creators one day ‒ maybe they'll start believing again that he can still be fixed.

Very carefully, he folds the piece of paper and presses it gently to his chest.

"Ah, s-sorry," Alphys mumbles for some reason.

They just reached a point where the corridor continues in three different directions. "Where do you want to go? I bet there's treasure at the end of one of these halls." She lowers her voice and looks around to make sure no one is listening. "That's the secret. Let's go on a treasure hunt!"

All three corridors look exactly the same and Sans starts sweating again while searching for a clue for the right answer.

When he doesn't pick a direction and just quietly panics in place instead, she moves a bit in front of him and starts quickly pointing at each of the corridors. "Eeny, meeny, miny, moe. There, it's this one." And she pulls him by his hand into the left corridor.

... Well. That was weird.

He doesn't really want to write on the paper anymore; it might make it look like the A+ is for more than just his spelling of 'secret' and that would be cheating. But it still works out, because Alphys doesn't ask many question anymore, only those he can answer by either nodding or shaking his head. She keeps talking and Sans listens, soaking up as much information as he can and hoping he'll be able to remember it all.

"And the mouse is really smart and helps the little elephant to reach the ball, a-and it's actually about friendship and working together as a ‒ a team, but it's also really funny."

Most of what she says is very complicated and he is missing a lot of words and knowledge to follow her stories properly.

"There's this one episode where the mouse is hiding and the elephant can't find her, so he puts the cheese everywhere but he's too tall and then he trips on it and ‒"

They still haven't found a secret or a treasure, even though they've been wandering around for a pretty long time now. Sans doesn't want to go, but he is getting a little tired. Maybe he'll have to write something else down after all, as soon as he figures out the proper words for asking her to bring him back to his room.

"D-don't tell anyone, but I think I actually like the books better. Mum reads them to me sometimes, but I can read really well on my own too and I'm already at the second book. It's longer than the first but better ‒ oh, hang on. Eeny, meeny, miny... this way. Anyway, so the second book ‒"

And suddenly, she stops. "Oh no."

Sans turns around, confused, and tries to figure out what she's looking at. There are two big, silver doors to their right, with glowing red numbers on top that are slowly changing. He can hear a dull rattling behind the doors.

"I bet that's my parents." Alphys looks down at a little clock she has strapped to her wrist. "I didn't mean to stay here so long. Oh no, I'll get grounded." She turns around hectically, but seems a bit defeated at the same time. Then she looks at him, wringing her hands while her eyes grow bigger and sadder. "You'll get in trouble! Quick, g-go hide!" She sprints to the closest door, pulling him along, then reaches up to the silvery keypad to type in a long string of numbers.

Sans suddenly feels really cold. She wants him to leave, she's sending him away again. What did he do wrong, he really didn't think he made too many mistakes this time. He doesn't want her to leave, so his free hand desperately clings to her sleeve, even as the door slides open and she tries to push him through.

"S-sans, let go. Please!" She is looking over her shoulder at the silver doors and the red numbers. "They're almost here! Look, I ‒ I promise I'll come see you again, okay? But you really need to hide in here now, then you can sneak back to your lab when we're gone and you won't get in trouble."

She promised. It's not something Sans ever read about or heard about from the creators or the tank. But before, Alphys promised to give him his pen and paper back ‒ and then she did.

He lets go of her sleeve, reluctantly, and she doesn't look happy at all, but strangely relieved. Then the door slides shut again, just as he hears a small ping from the other doors. He can't see or hear Alphys anymore.

For a little while, he stands there in front of the door and counts the seconds. She told him to hide here, but he has no idea for how long and how to even open up the door again without the passcode. He really should have looked at that as she typed it in. She probably expected him to, so now she thinks he has a way out when he really doesn't and it's all because of his own stupidity again.

Everything remains quiet. The room is still lit with the same green light as the corridors and now Sans begins to understand why Alphys "lost her nerve" walking through that on her own. When he slowly turns on the spot to look around, there are shadows flickering and growing into shapes in the corner of his eye. Only when he whips around and stares them down directly do they stop and go back to being normal shadows.

He closes his eyes for a second, shivering and jumping from one foot to another. He's always cold in his lab, but this one is much, much bigger and colder and darker. It makes the skin on his arms and the back of his neck prickle.

Barely daring to blink, Sans starts walking farther into the laboratory. The desks and drawers seem higher here, they are black and shiny and look kind of sharp. Sickly green light glints off of the equipment on top, weird glasses and spirals and little tubes. When he rounds a table and gets a better look at the whole lab, he realizes that it doesn't even end at the opposite wall: There is a dull glass door in the middle, seemingly leading to another room at least as big as this one. As he stares at it, orange light flickers behind it through the green and the shadows.

It's the only source of real light that he can see right now and standing in the darkness is starting to make him anxious. So, without spending too much time to think on it, he shuffles through the lab, checking the shadows as he goes, but they all shrink back just before he can catch them in the act of growing larger.

Before he can even touch the door, it notices his presence and slides open. Sans hastily stumbles forward, glad to be away from the spooky green and black, and turns around curiously to find out where he is now.

He doesn't even have the time to really look at anything. There is the sudden noise of clinking glass to his left, making him jump in surprise and jerk around sharply.

It's tall.

And dark.

It leans over him with a white, frowning face so far up that Sans almost falls as he bends back to look at it.

"Ah. A new thing," it says.


	4. Royal Scientist

**Royal Scientist**

It's getting warmer, suddenly. Sans is always cold, even freezing with his naked feet on the tiled floor, but the orange light curling through the air around him slowly takes that away now. It's making beads of sweat roll down his neck and forehead, his soul beating frantically in his chest. And the thing above him stares, its round, black eye caught by the movement.

"SA-N5, I presume." It has a sharp, scratchy voice that makes Sans wince and shudder, but it knows how to talk, so it must be a creator, too. How many are there that he didn't know about?

It bends down and forward, a long, slender hand with sharp fingers stretching towards him. Sans holds his breath and stands completely still. "Now that," and it points to the vibrating blue soul in Sans' chest, "that seems much more interesting than I was lead to believe."

The face is smiling now, Sans thinks, but it's hard for him to read. One of its eyes is small and droopy, the other big and round, thin glass rectangles sitting in front of them. Its smooth, white skin barely moves as it speaks. But the mouth is curling up, that's good, that can only be a smile. Sans smiles back, even though he's twitchy and shaky and bites his tongue with his crooked tooth before he manages it. There is a faint orange glow on his soul, just at the corners, that's what feels so warm and it makes him want to run and jump and do ten different things at the same time.

The thing stops looking at Sans' soul for a bit and now stares at his face instead. Its head moves to side, like Alphys' did when she was curious. The words it grumbles now are deep and quiet and all jumbled together, but it sounds a little like questions. And then answers. Is it talking to itself? Sans didn't know you could do that.

With a quick shake of its head, it kneels down all the way, crouching right in front of Sans and moving its hand closer towards his chest again. Sans jerks back just a little at the sudden movement, but as long as he's not getting any instructions, he'll try to just stay where he is. He doesn't really know why, but this creator seems important.

The hand is covered by a light plastic glove, the same kind the other creators wear when they do tests on him. He has just enough time to notice that before the fingers reach his chest ‒ and then keep going. Through his skin. _Into his chest._

All the air in his lungs is suddenly punched out of him. He wheezes and doubles over, but another hand grabs his upper arm and holds him in place. Gasping and panting in his search for breath, he feels his own hands cling to the creator's black coat, pulling on the fabric, desperately searching for support to keep himself upright.

The fingers moving through the hole in his chest hurt much worse than the needles, they feel like burning and freezing at the same time. Bile rises up his throat, something hot drips from the corner of his mouth. He curls in on himself as much as he can, trying to cough and failing miserably as he can't take a proper breath. His feet start slipping away from under him, losing all feeling and the hand on his arm is the only thing keeping him from falling.

When the fingers reach his soul, loosely wrapping around it, everything goes white. A resounding crack echoes through his ears, his back arches violently and hot, scalding pain shoots through his skull. He feels his eyes roll back in his head, a warm metal taste spreads through his mouth and the hot liquid spills out from his face, dripping from his nose and his ears.

For a second, he feels like he is knocked into the void, before he immediately snaps back and sees orange, feels himself being burned from the inside and hears a brutal, screeching sound that's being ripped out of his own throat. His flailing hands abruptly find hold in front of him, pressing flat against the creator's chest. Somehow, through all the blinding pain, he feels the soft presence of a frail, white soul below his hands, tinted orange on the inside and glowing steadily.

There is no decision, absolutely no coherent thought on his part. The moment he finds the soul, his own pushes hard against the grip, sends pulsing magic through his limbs and then ‒

 _~ Ting._

The pain stops. The hand is gone, the terrible screaming is gone. Sans doesn't even pay attention to the loud crash in front of him as the creator is slammed hard into the ground; he just stumbles backwards and down to the floor, barely able to sit upright, and hides away his soul behind his hands. Droplets of red and blue liquid lazily roll from his face onto his legs and the metallic taste makes him want to puke, but he focuses on breathing steadily, trying to ignore the rest. The lab looks blurry and much darker than before.

A new sound starts up suddenly. Quiet gasping turns into a series of small breaths, louder and louder, until Sans recognizes it: It's chuckling. Then laughing. Confused, he looks down at the floor in front of him, where the creator is pushing himself up on his elbows, his hand feeling around on the floor in search for his glasses. Sans can't do anything but watch, can't even begin to panic over the thought that he just used his magic to hurt a creator. His mind is all fuzzy and numb, not one thought manages to form completely before it turns to dust.

With his laughter turning into a small cough, the creator fumbles the glasses back onto his face and jumps into a crouch, his face shining brightly with a big smile. "Blue magic, brilliant!" As if nothing happened at all, he straightens up and begins pacing, freeing his hand from the glove and snapping it somewhere behind him; judging from the sound, it takes some glass equipment down with it. "It's not dead after all! Amazing, absolutely astonishing, how did the idiots even manage that?" With one hand, he grabs a small black cube from his pocket and taps it a few times ‒ Sans thinks it's a "beeper", but he doesn't know what it does ‒ then swivels around and points at Sans with the other. "That was great. Just like that, ting-wham-splat, love it. Oh, however ‒"

His eyes glow orange and with a pang, Sans' soul follows suit. The creator smiles, his voice turns cold. "Do not ever attack me again."

His orange soul wants him to move, but Sans can't, his muscles are screaming in protest even at the mere idea of moving. From one second to the next, everything hurts, the sound of a number ticking down echoes in his head, then he falls backwards.

Just before he falls, he sees the creator hastily pull his hand away and raising his eyebrows in surprise. Then Sans' eyes fall closed and he sinks into blackness.

Gaster stares at the unconscious experiment, knocked down to zero point one health after just one measly attack. He rubs the back of his neck awkwardly. "Whoops."

* * *

Freeda knows full well that not everything revolves around her, but on a day like this, she can't help but think that the universe is purposely out to get her. It started with the really depressing realization that their independent work of the last half year is complete and utter garbage. Then her granddaughter decided to steal her code and go gallivanting through a high security facility in the middle of the night. And now, just after Freeda, her son and his wife managed to catch the troublemaker and drag her back to the CORE scientist housing complex, the emergency beeper goes off. "Idiot shaming, lab 2" is all it says, and while Gaster does call them idiots fairly often, he doesn't usually employ quite that much snark in his emergency calls. So it's safe to assume that this one will be big.

Grynn and Pollard stumble into the elevator at the same time as her, both obviously just fallen out of bed, looking appropriately disgruntled and unkempt. Freeda crosses her arms and looks past them, unwilling to participate in the argument that is sure to come.

"So, who screwed up?" Pollard starts as if on cue. "You were in charge of the magic decompression field generator, right? Did you forget to turn it on?"

"Yes, Pollard, seeing as I'm completely incapable of rational thought, it is naturally I that screwed up one of the most fundamental maintenance tasks that I perform every day. You got me." Grynn isn't even wearing her lab coat or her trademark thick eyeliner, which makes her look three times as tired and annoyed as she probably is.

"Well, it has to be something really stupid, or he wouldn't have phrased it like that."

"And because it's something really stupid, it has to be my fault?" She snorts a fake laugh and shakes her head. "Your lack of self-awareness never ceases to astound me."

Freeda presses the button for the third floor, even though it's already been pressed. Maybe the irrational gesture, conveying her urgent desire to reach their goal, will be enough to let the others know she isn't in the mood for their bickering. But of course she is ignored and the elevator keeps moving at its usual slow pace.

"I'm just saying, you know, those maintenance things are very susceptible to mistakes, exactly because they're so boring and unchallenging. And you were the one in charge of that today, so."

"I was also the one in charge yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that. Just as I have been most of the time. Now tell me about the last time any of these tasks got screwed up?"

"Look, that isn't fair, I was really new back then and I didn't ‒"

"Thank you, case closed, now shut up." Grynn crosses her arms as well, looks past Pollard demonstratively and lets herself fall against the elevator wall. Pollard huffs indignantly and stares at nothing.

Freeda presses the button three more times.

The awkwardness of the silence between them dissipates the very moment they reach their goal and the elevator doors slide open. Most of the lights in the corridor are turned off and only one or two flickering bulbs farther down still produce the green energy-saving lighting that most of the complex switches to after hours. The doors to Laboratory 2 are right in front of them ‒ and wide open. The keypad hanging next to it blinks a red warning light through the darkness.

"What's going on?" Pollard asks hesitantly, his hands somehow finding its way onto Freeda's shoulder and the crook of Grynn's arm. "Should we call security?"

Freeda slowly tilts her head to the side in thought. This looks like some kind of power outage, which happens a lot in underground due to the Magic Emission ‒ or ME for short ‒ but it's odd that the emergency generator apparently didn't jump in. Still, she shrugs off Pollard's hand and steps out into the corridor. "If that was necessary, I'm sure Wing Ding took care of it already," she says, waving at her colleagues to follow her. "Let's see what this is about."

The lab is dark and silent when they enter. She would have expected Gaster to be at work in the magic quarantine chamber of the lab, as usual, but a quick look tells her that the room behind the glass door is empty. Wind Ding's signature orange magic is nowhere to be seen.

She hears Grynn reaching for her pager. "I'll ask him where he is," she informs them and begins tapping away on the thing. "Maybe he forgot he called us and ran off to fix the problem by himself."

"That does kinda sound like him," Pollard mumbles, then straightens up a bit and finally steps out from behind Grynn's back. "There is an emergency light switch in here somewhere, right?"

Freeda points behind him to the wall. "Next to the door, but it's out of order."

Of course Pollard still walks over and tries switching it on three times in a row. "Damn." He stuffs his hands in his pockets and nervously looks around.

As Freeda begins walking farther into the lab, a strange sensation overcomes her. "There is magical residue here," she informs the other two. Being able to feel differences in magic emissions more accurately is one advantage of being much older than them. "And it's not Wing Ding's magic." Grynn and Pollard make some unhappy noises behind her, but it doesn't sound very important, so she just keeps carefully walking around the first row of tables to get a better look at the rest of the lab. Glass crunches under her shoes with her next step and she looks down at a bunch of broken equipment on the floor. Even to her, this is beginning to feel ominous.

Grynn is right behind her and as the middle aisle comes into view for both of them, she releases a shocked breath. "Oh fuck!"

Freeda doesn't waste any time. With her soul quickly pounding in her chest, she runs the last few steps forward and kneels down next to Gaster, lying lifeless on the floor. A small amount of white dust raises up in tiny clouds as she walks through it.

"Oh my God." Pollard's voice is panicked and muffled as he presses his hands to his mouth, stumbling backwards. "Oh God."

Grynn follows Freeda and kneels down on his other side. "Shit, is he dead?"

"Not enough dust for that," Freeda says shortly, though the fact that there is any dust at all still means that their boss is seriously injured at best ‒ and close to death at worst. She runs her hands over his sides along the ribcage, trying to read his soul, but she is not a healer and this has never been her strength. So it doesn't have to mean anything that she can't feel any of his soul energy right now. Somehow, when she speaks, her voice still comes out sounding hoarse and panicked. "Nothing. I'll keep checking, call for a healer immediately."

Her hands are shaking. Pollard sounds like he's about to throw up. Grynn types the medical emergency code into her pager and whispers one curse after another.

"Oh God, we killed him," Pollard moans, leaning heavily on a table. "We made some stupid mistake and now he's gonna die. Oh ‒ I... I think I'm gonna be sick..."

Freeda gestures for Grynn to help her turn Gaster over so she can reach his soul from a better angle. He's lying face down on the floor, the small pile of dust slowly dispersing into the air from around his head. Just as they're about to grab him and roll him to his side, she suddenly feels magic prickling in the air again.

"Down!" she orders loudly, seizing Grynn by her collar and pulling her down with her, the very moment a glass beaker flies by over their heads, encased in blue magic. It crashes to the wall and shatters loudly, spraying glass everywhere.

Pollard tumbles to the ground unceremoniously and crawls over to them. "What the hell is happening?" he whines.

Freeda ignores him, reaching for her own magic and summoning a circle of her small, triangular bullets around her hand. She jumps to her feet, turning around warily and trying to determine the source of the magic. Grynn pushes Pollard between the two of them and he lets out a panicked, disgusted gurgle as he almost lands on Gaster's body, then she stands up and positions herself with her back to Freeda's. Together, they slowly circle around, waiting for another attack. Pollard in the meanwhile frantically calls for security again with his pager, five times in a row it seems.

Three test-tubes are catapulted off the table to their right and smashed to the floor next to them, then another beaker flies toward them from the opposite direction. Grynn and Freeda whirl around, easily avoiding the blue glowing projectiles, and send their own round of bullets sporadically in the direction the magic seems to be coming from, which is somewhere above them and to the left.

Something is not right at all. Those attacks were barely even aimed at them; the tubes simply fell straight to the ground. And blue magic? Nobody is even supposed to have that. Adrenalin is coursing through Freeda's body, telling her to react defensively to the attacks, but the gears in her head are still turning in their attempt to analyze the situation, and everything they come up with makes her more and more suspicious.

But before she can put her finger on it, Pollard lets out a shocked scream and the next second, orange magic bursts into the air between them, pushing all three of them back. As they're fighting to regain their balance, there are three small _~tings_ sounding through the room and just like that, Freeda feels her soul growing heavy, dragging her down to meet the floor. Her glasses shatter at the impact.

The laughter she hears next fills her with relief at first, then with seething anger.

"HA!" Gaster yells as he jumps to his feet and loudly claps his hands. "Get dunked on!"

Freeda drags herself back to her feet with a painful grunt, hand pressed against her forehead. She is just about ready to give the Royal Scientist the tongue-lashing of a lifetime ‒ but what she sees when her vision clears enough to make out details stops her short and just has her staring ahead in utter confusion.

SA-N5 is climbing down from behind a vent in the wall, assisted by Gaster, who catches the experiment, sets it down next to him and then holds out his hand to it. "And high five! Just like we practiced." Freeda feels her jaw drop as SA-N5 giggles, gives Gaster a high five and jumps up and down, grinning from ear to ear.

As far as she can tell from what she sees out the corner of her eyes, her colleagues are not doing any better than her. "What?" Pollard asks. "What is ‒ what? I'm... _What?_ "

"What he said," Grynn drones, numbly staring at their "failed" experiment; it's breathing hard, sweat on its brow and swaying a bit on its feet, but it's holding on to the pant leg of their boss and smiling up at him.

Their boss who, as Freeda notices now, has actual dust trickling down from his forehead. "Wing Ding," she starts forcibly calm, "did you cut up your own soul just for the sake of a stupid prank?"

"No, that would be irresponsible and borderline psychotic," Gaster answers immediately, actually managing to sound truly offended. "I did, however, smear some fake dust on my head in order to play an awesome prank on three complete dimwits who deserve no better." He grabs a handful of tissues from the nearest drawer and wipes the powder away from his head. "Made it myself actually, just last week. I was only waiting for an opportunity to try it out. Now," he throws the ball of tissues away again and it knocks over another beaker, "let's talk about how completely incompetent you three are at your jobs! That's always fun."

Freeda rubs her forehead, forcing herself to slowly count backwards from a hundred, while Grynn groans deeply, covering her face with her hands.

Pollard bends over, leaning on his knees and breathing hard. "I'll just ‒ I'm not sure, I might still throw up a bit." Then he lets himself drop to the floor like a sack of potatoes and buries his head in his arms.

* * *

In the time it takes the three scientist to regain their bearings, Gaster procures a blanket for Sans to sit on; the cold is slowly getting to the boy, making him shiver and chatter his teeth. His shiny white pupils still attentively follow Gaster through the room though, almost forcibly focused on him and apparently attempting to ignore the others. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that he is extremely wary of the three. The way his shoulders hunch up and his head drops down just a tiny bit whenever he notices them looking at him says much more than words.

It's going to be a lot of work to get his head on straight again. Gaster starts by positioning himself between Sans and the assistants, sat on a chair right next to the blanket so as to offer an illusion of protection. Dr. Grynn and Dr. Pollard are sitting slumped over their own chairs opposite to him, staring at the experiment and occasionally still shaking their heads or rubbing their eyes in disbelief. Freeda has her hands crossed behind her back, standing up straight next to them and looking right at Gaster, waiting for him to speak.

It's Dr. Pollard who starts speaking, though. "How did this happen?" he asks, the tone of complete helplessness making Gaster's skin crawl in his desire to slap some courage into the man. "I just, I don't even know where to start here. How did it get out?"

"Critical oversight of basic safety protocol?" Gaster offers, hands lying forcibly still on the knees of his crossed legs. "Crippling incompetence of the scientists in charge? I'm just brainstorming here, don't mind me." Despite his effort to keep relatively calm, he can't quite keep his foot from steadily rocking up and down.

"Laboratory 4 was opened from the outside roughly two hours ago, according to the security log," Freeda says, who can read his moods better than the others and knows when to offer facts instead of opinions and ‒ ugh ‒ feelings. "We are waiting for access to the camera feed."

Gaster starts at that. "Wait, you guys actually request permission from security to view the footage? You don't hack the cameras whenever you want?" He looks around between their faces, chuckling condescendingly. "Now that's almost cute."

Dr. Pollard immediately begins sweating heavily. "I, I guess we can go hack the cameras instead ‒"

"Great idea," Gaster interrupts, snapping his fingers mockingly. "It's always best to do your illegal information gathering when you know that security is looking at the exact same footage you wish to hack into at this very moment." He takes a second to stare Dr. Pollard down until the man's ears and whiskers are quivering so violently they look close to falling off, then he turns away to face the others. "Do it when you know for certain they're done. You will check all the recordings of Lab 4 since activation of this project. This" And he gestures to the child kneeling on the floor next to him, hands crossed protectively over his chest and staring up at him with wide eyes, "cannot be a new development."

Dr. Grynn jumps in as if she was only waiting for a chance to defend herself. "It never acted like that around us, Doctor. We're not stupid. If it had reacted to any of our attempts at communication, we would have properly documented that."

"Only if it reacted in a very specific way, I presume," Gaster retorts, unable to keep his fingers from angrily drumming on his knees any longer. "Tunnel vision, Dr. Grynn, has always been a problem of yours, as well as a lack of patience on your part, Dr. Pollard, and a frankly formidable indifference towards everything and everyone from you, Freeda."

"Wing Ding," Freeda intones warningly, the same way she would likely admonish a child for raising its voice against an elder.

"I did say 'idiot shaming,'" Gaster shrugs. "Don't act surprised about it."

Dr. Grynn lets out a heavy sigh. "Just tell us what we did wrong?"

"I want to say 'everything'. Sadly, that's not entirely correct, so I'm going with 'close to everything'. Still scathing enough, I believe. How exactly did you attempt communication? Because he was more than eager to share information with me as soon as I tried." He bends down quickly and snatches up the piece of paper that Sans was carrying. When he lifts it up from the blanket, the boy releases his grip on his own chest, his hands following the paper seemingly involuntarily. Gaster ignores the sad look on his face and the begging grabby motions he makes with his fingers, but files the information away for later use. He points to the word "sans" written on top of the paper in big, round letters. "When asked his designation, this was his reply. Notice anything weird about that?"

Freeda huffs and shakes her head in an unusual display of self-deprecating amusement. "Frankly, from our point of view, the fact that it knows how to write at all is confounding enough."

"It calls itself 'Sans'?" Dr. Grynn asks, squinting at the paper. "We never taught it that."

Dr. Pollard scratches his head and tries to inconspicuously hide his still twitching ears at the same time. "So, wait a moment. It actually came up with a name by itself? A creative deviation from its original designation, no less. That's ‒"

"An independent and creative cognitive process," Freeda jumps in. "That it concerns its own name is a sure sign of at least some level of self-awareness."

Gaster loudly claps his hands three times and the experiment jumps in surprise. "Gold star for you!" he says, calming Sans down quickly by thrusting the piece of paper back into his hands. The kid smiles up at him, bouncing up and down slightly and even shuffling a little closer to him. "Ugh," Gaster mumbles. "Sans, go back to drawing or something." Even though the boy must be incredibly tired, he still nods enthusiastically, picks up his pen and begins doodling all over the paper.

Dr. Pollard can't seem to take his eyes off of it. "It's aware?" he asks quietly. "Actually aware, I mean, like ‒ but that's far fetched, right? We made it to imitate natural behaviour, maybe that just turned out better than we thought possible?"

"Oh, yes, what was I thinking?" Gaster presses a hand to his chest and shakes his head as if he's ashamed. "Believing that a being with a functional soul might actually be considered alive, how asinine of me. Of course it's much more likely that it imitates _thought processes_ , which are obviously visible for everyone and therefore easily imitated." He drops the act, pushes up his glasses and points menacingly at Dr. Pollard. "You're going to bed without a treat today, mister."

In his attempt to avoid the judging eyes of his boss, Dr. Pollard hunches up in his chair and looks around nervously, focusing on the paper in Sans' hand. Then he takes a quiet, sharp breath and slouches over even more.

Gaster leans back in his own chair, a very slow grin stretching across his face. "Dr. Pollard," he begins with a sickly sweet tone of voice. "What is that scent of shame and regret wafting through the air from your general direction? Surely this can't be a sign for a growing awareness of your own ineptitude?"

Groaning as all the attention focuses on him, Dr. Pollard buries his face in his hands. "I, uh, I don't ‒ I'm sorry." He takes a deep breath and sits up again, pointing at the picture Sans is doodling. It looks like some kind of animal. "There were a lot of drawings like that in the trash in Lab 4... I ‒ I thought maybe they were from Freeda's grandkid or something..."

Freeda grunts unhappily at that. "And I assumed they were from your children," she says dryly. "How unfortunate."

As Sans' pen movements slow down and he carefully looks up, obviously aware that his actions are being discussed right now. Gaster just folds his arms and keeps grinning dangerously. "This just keeps getting better. You know how all this might have been prevented? Crazy idea, but bear with me here: Communication."

And at last he managed to piss off Dr. Grynn it seems, as she finally jumps up from her chair and begins walking over to the blanket with decisive steps. "Alright, I know we screwed up," she says, grabbing the pen and paper and ignoring how Sans recoils from her, "but we tried communicating with it and it didn't work! Here." She hastily produces a very simplified drawing of a house and holds it out to Sans. "This is a house. Say 'house!'" Sans looks at her, wide eyed and intimidated, then at the drawing, then he very quickly flashes a look in Gaster's direction. Gaster remains neutral and simply watches him struggle with indecision. Just as the boy reluctantly starts moving his arms, probably intending to reach out towards the drawing, Dr. Grynn loses her patience, drops the paper and turns back to Gaster. "See? It doesn't even try."

Gaster looks at her in dead silence for a few seconds (five, to be exact, which is always just long enough to freak her out, but not so long that she believes she has a right to continue talking. There is a very intricate science to this.) Then he stands up abruptly, using his sheer height to make her back down and reign in her inappropriate anger. "I would at least somewhat excuse this with the fact that you're not a linguist, so you being in charge of an area so far removed from your expertise was a terrible idea in the first place. However," he takes the paper from her and turns away to crouch down to Sans' level, "I am not an expert in communication either and was still easily able to figure this out. Sans, do you know what this is?"

Sans nods timidly, looking back and forth between the drawing, Gaster and Dr. Grynn. It takes him a while again to work up the courage, but when he reaches out to the paper this time, Gaster passes it to him immediately and sits back patiently as Sans writes with trembling hands. While he works, the three scientists all edge a little closer, looking over his shoulder in fascination.

"Hows" is what he comes up with. Gaster holds it up for the others to read, then takes a second to correct the spelling and hands the paper back to Sans, who immediately begins practicing the word over and over again.

"Hm." Gaster pretends to rub his chin in thought. "Surprisingly, yelling at him to do the one thing you want him to do and at the same time ignoring his nonverbal cues did not lead to a successful communication. Who'd have thought?"

Not bothering to even look at his assistants, Gaster gets back up and slowly paces up and down while he rains words of condemnation down on them. It's more effective when they think he doesn't even really care, because it makes his harsh words sound less like personal insults and more like objective truths. Which, incidentally, they are. "Tunnel vision, people. Is it contagious now? Did Dr. Grynn infect everyone? If you had bothered to ask him questions and pay attention to his many different ways of answering, if you hadn't focused so much on him not doing the two things you wanted him to do and overlooked the ten other things he did instead, we could have actually been benefiting from this experiment months ago already."

Freeda nods during the following bout of silence. "That is correct."

"Come on, Freeda," Dr. Grynn hisses pleadingly, offended at her colleague's lack of integrity.

But of course Freeda remains unimpressed. "There is no point in defending our mistakes. We didn't take this project seriously and ended up neglecting it critically. If it hadn't developed enough initiative to leave the laboratory, we would never have ‒" Suddenly, she very atypically drifts off for a moment, before straightening her shoulders again and continuing with the same level of indifference. "I just realized how suspicious it is that at approximately the same time SA-N5 left its confines, my granddaughter was using my access codes to explore the facility without supervision."

Gaster throws his head back and bursts out into laughter. "Beautiful," he shouts. "Guys, this is the best idiot shaming we ever had. I'm having so much fun right now."

"Really?" Dr. Grynn sounds like she is about to cry at how ridiculous this all is. "You gave your fucking codes to your fucking grandkid, are you kidding me right now?"

"Obviously I did not give them to her, she watched me type it and remembered it, seeing as she is very talented with numbers."

The topic seems to have caught Sans' attention, as he suddenly begins bouncing on his knees again, excitedly writing something new and then waving the paper through the air. Already he is much more eager for the scientists' attention than he was at the very beginning of the conversation, and it just needed the tiniest bit of positive reinforcement. That, at least, is promising.

Dr. Pollard, who ended up standing closest to Sans, is taken aback slightly by the sudden enthusiasm. He looks around for help awkwardly as Sans starts pulling at his pant leg, looking up at him expectantly and continuously waving the paper around. "Uh, what is it ‒ I think SA-N5 is trying ‒ uh." Gaster stares at him darkly and waves the other two off as they start forward a bit to interfere. If the idiot still hasn't understood how he's supposed to treat these attempts at interaction, Gaster has no problem whatsoever giving him the boot right here and now.

Beads of sweat are forming on Dr. Pollard's brow, but he finally shifts his focus to the child at his leg, bends down and carefully looks at the paper, holding one edge of it between his fingers without taking it away from him. "Ah. That's. Hm. You ‒ you meant to spell 'Alphys', I think. It's A-L-P-H-Y-S."

Sans eagerly goes back to writing and spells the name correctly this time, showing it off with a proud grin. He circles the "A+" that is written on the page, pointing to it with his pen.

"Yes, uh, good, that's spelled right now. Oh, and there's an A+, look at that. Yeah, it's ‒ it's great." Dr. Pollard keeps looking at the experiment for a while, completely out of his element, before he pulls his leg away and turns back to his colleagues. "I'm confused now. Is it ‒ are we treating it like a child from now on? It acts more like one. And are we calling it 'it' or 'he'? This is so weird."

"He looks like a boy, so let's go with that," Gaster decides, waving a hand in Dr. Pollard's direction to shut him up as he opens his mouth at that. This is really no time to discuss gender politics. "And he responds well to being treated like an actual living being as opposed to an artificial soul, so doing that is going to get us better results. Logical thinking, guys! If that's as hard for you as it appears to be, I'm really starting to question your career choices. Anyways, onto the interesting stuff." With a loud snap of his fingers, he points right at the blue soul, which makes Sans scoot back a bit in fear. And yes, that particular reaction is probably due to Gaster's own misconduct. He never said he was above fallibility. "Blue magic. How the fuck did you let that one fly over your heads?"

"He never used it!" Dr. Grynn promptly returns to being indignant. "Not once. We did the BAS scans right after start-up, we documented the stats, everything. His magic levels are ‒ well, they should be too low to do anything with it."

"Incorrect," Gaster says. "Either the readings were wrong or the stats changed."

"It's his stats! They can't just change!" If there's one thing she's good at, it's being indignant. "And we did all the tests three times on the first day, not to mention all the pre-start-up readings ‒ across the board single values. One Attack, one Defense, one HP and one Magical Power. Those were the results, and yes we screwed up a lot here, but we're not so far gone that we can't reliably test for basic soul statistics."

"He used blue magic," Gaster says, speaking extra slowly to see her get even more angry. "Either the readings were wrong or the stats changed. Do you want to yell a bit more, see if it will warp reality into another version of itself where you are a capable scientist?"

He can see very clearly that she desperately wants to keep yelling, but even she knows better than to provoke him right now. With a slow sigh, he adjusts his glasses and turns back to addressing all of them at once. "Do the scans again tomorrow, after he recovered. The whole sneaking around, almost dying and then expending all the rest of his magic thing made him a bit tired, it seems." And he gestures towards Sans, who is now curled up in a corner of his blanket, clutching pen and paper to his chest and watching them all through eyes that are gradually falling shut.

"Huh," Dr. Pollard mumbles, scratching his neck. "Should we really just let him sleep instead of shutting him down properly? He could wake up any time." His hand freezes mid-scratch, his eyes growing round. "Wait. Speaking of shutting down ‒ what about the overloads? That, I mean, could that explain it? The fact that he can use magic?"

"Whatever are you on about?" Gaster asks.

"We shut him down by removing half of the magic essence from his soul and then re-injecting it to wake him up," is Dr. Pollard's rushed explanation. "He's been experiencing magic overloads during re-injection for the last weeks, which we assumed had to do with the rising ME levels."

"Magic Emission levels are regulated in the labs," Gaster slowly counters. "The rest of the CORE facility is susceptible to overloads and general malfunctions, yes, but the laboratories and the actual Core are isolated to keep as much magic out as possible. We'd be taking insane risks otherwise by just standing in the general vicinity of any technical equipment."

"Yes, exactly. There still is Magic Emission happening in the labs, of course, even if on a lower level than anywhere else. We assumed that he reacted this strongly to it because of his low stats; that for someone with just one Magical Power, even the tiniest bit of superfluous ME would cause an overload. That's ‒ that's not it, is it?"

Gaster tilts his head to the side with a small smile. "Well, someone's trying to win back their treat." He waves it off as Dr. Pollard begins to awkwardly stutter some half-formed apologies. "I didn't say you were wrong."

With Sans fast asleep now, Gaster can bend over him and take a closer look at the soul without scaring him. It only takes him a little while to find what he's looking for. "Heh," he breathes, straightening up again and folding his hands behind his back. "I'm calling it. The scans tomorrow will reveal a crazy increase in MP in this soul. See these fractures?" He points at the light blue streaks stretching across the skin of the deep blue heart. "We've seen similar tearing in souls that we injected with additional magic to increase MP, way back when most research was still about making monsters stronger instead of regulating their magic flow. These are a sure sign that the MP in this soul has grown, and at a rather quick and damaging pace no less."

"That doesn't make any sense," Dr. Grynn says confusedly. "We always injected the same amount of magic that was extracted beforehand, how could this lead to increased MP?"

It's like being back to teaching, Gaster thinks, and he hated teaching. "When does MP naturally grow in monsters?" he forces himself to ask calmly.

Dr. Grynn is not amused, crossing her arms over her chest and glaring at him. "It doesn't, that's the point."

"Oh no, wrong again! You're not doing so well right now, Dr. Grynn, just a heads-up."

"Well, I mean," Dr. Pollard nervously jumps back in, "an increase in LV also leads to a growth of the remaining stats ‒"

"Yes, alright, technically that's correct, but let's assume for the moment that this toddler didn't kill a bunch of monsters while you weren't looking. When else does a soul grow?"

They helplessly exchange a few looks, before Dr. Pollard shrugs. "Before it's born?"

"Phew!" Gaster claps his hands a few times ‒ more quietly now, Sans has to sleep after all. "A right answer! Man, at this rate I'll run out of gold stars. I never had to use up more than two in a year with you guys."

Carried away by the subject matter, he begins pacing up and down at a faster rate, barely aware of the hand movements accompanying his words. "A soul grows and adapts in the time frame between its initial creation and the moment it completely fuses with its new body ‒ the moment it's 'born'. After that, yes, only LV can still change the stats. But this here is a different case, an unnatural one, and that is the key. You operated under the assumption that you were creating a finished soul, so you gave it the amount of magic you thought it should have according to its stats. Only that you were actually building a fetus, in the broadest sense. A monster fetus that is supposed to start with zero magic and that then naturally grows its own reserves. Anyone see what I'm getting at yet?"

Judging by Dr. Pollard's resigned little groan, he does. "It was still growing. We put a set number on all the other stats, but the soul 'wanted' to grow, basically. The only flexible variable in the blueprints of a human soul would be Magical Power, since humans don't have that."

"So the MP was the only statistic that could still change by itself," Freeda says. "Its magic has been steadily increasing this whole time. At a much higher rate than normal, too, because the soul expended all its energy on raising just one stat ‒ energy that is usually used for raising all four of them."

"Wait, wait." Even Dr. Grynn is finally catching on, it seems, as she rubs her forehead and frowns deeply. "Doesn't that also mean that every time we extracted some of the magic, the soul noticed the difference? It would have tried to even out the deficit, growing its magical reserves until they were the same as before. And then we re-injected the magic we removed and that's what caused the overloads. Because it already was at full capacity and we forced it to make room for even more."

"End result being: He has a fuck ton of magic." Gaster can't help but grin, his hands still dancing through the air as if on their own accord and forming the symbols correlating to his words. "Seriously, it's a miracle his soul didn't rip itself to shreds. Though it does look like it almost did every time you woke him up. The only reason he's still alive is the fact that his soul is still developing and has at least a tiny chance to adapt to this kind of ordeal. It might still kill him in the end, seeing as we don't know for how long it will keep developing and how much more MP it's going to build up."

Ashamed silence meets his last words and a bit of his own enthusiasm fades away at the realization that they could still lose this experiment entirely. He slows down to a stop and looks back up at his assistants. "I'm seriously inclined to take this project away from you entirely," he begins, letting a few seconds tick by for them to feel appropriately humiliated. "But, as it is, this just became a very high priority experiment. All of your incredibly cringe-worthy mistakes did, in the end, still lead to the revival of blue magic, so I'll probably not fire you. You are in the dog house, though! Starting tomorrow, I'm having you all wear dunce caps to work for at least the next year. Don't think I'm joking."

He has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep himself from laughing as their expressions franticly switch back and forth between relief, worry and doubt. "Well," he starts again as soon as he has himself under control, "as long as he's still alive and kicking, we should see to it that we get as much out of this as possible. This is incredibly good news in the end; we now have one more kind of Human Soul Magic to work with in order to fix the ME crisis. We _will_ make good use of this."

Freeda pushes up her glasses. "I feel it is necessary at this point to bring up the ethical implications," she says. "We are, after all, forbidden by royal degree from experimenting on living, unwilling subjects."

Gaster makes sure to give each of them a very pointed look. "Well, I don't know about you," he says extra slowly, "but I feel like the whole 'living' thing is still debatable in this particular case. It is an artificial soul, after all."

Dr. Pollard looks confused and Gaster kind of wants to punch him. "You just spent the last fifteen minutes convincing us he's alive, what ‒" Then he notices the looks he's receiving from both his colleagues and his boss. He falters. "Oh. Uh. Never mind. Yes, very debatable."

Dr. Grynn shakes her head in annoyance and Gaster hurries up to keep talking.

"Asgore doesn't need to know about the details here, he'd just try to shut us down and this is too important to let that happen. I already made sure the security guards won't bother him with it." He flips a little gold coin from his pocket into the air and catches it again. "This is really only an internal matter for the science department, no need to go spreading it around. Freeda, we're going to have a chat with your granddaughter, bring her in tomorrow."

He doesn't wait for a reaction ‒ knowing Freeda, he won't get one from her anyways, even if it's about her family ‒ and instead turns to watch the sleeping child on the floor for a while. Deep in thought, he nudges up one corner of the blanket with his foot and flips it over, so that Sans is now covered by it and less likely to freeze to death. "It's crucial to let him sleep and replenish his energy for now, we don't want to put even more strain on his soul after all this. He will have to be monitored twenty-four-seven. I'm staying here tonight, starting tomorrow we'll work out a system."

Abruptly, he spins around again, staring the three of them down over the rims of his glasses. "In conclusion: You three suck. Starting right now, all of you are on probation. Any more mistakes on this and you're out. Out of this project, out of this job ‒ out of this field, if I have any say in it. And I do. You'll begin work on unraveling this cluster fuck tomorrow and you have one week to present me with everything that actually happened since project SA-N5 began. No more assumptions, no more tunnel vision. No more _ignoring half of the data right in front of your eyes_ , for fuck's sake. Is that clear?"

He half expects their heads to detach from their necks with how quickly they nod their understanding.

"Good." He waves his hands dismissively, suppressing a tired sigh. "Idiot shaming done. For today at least."


	5. Increasing Gravity

**Increasing Gravity**

Once again, Sans wakes up to needles.

Though they're not in his soul this time, that already makes everything a little bit better. But when he moves his arm, something tugs at the port on his wrist. He stops for a moment, his eyes still shut tight, then he carefully tests the other arm and gets the same result. His fingers scratch along the oddly soft surface he's lying on in search for the pen, but it's gone. His throat goes tight at that and he swallows a lot, trying to make his lower lip stop quivering. It was only a matter of time, after all.

So far, nothing really hurts worse than usual. That's weird. The needles are always painful, whether they're in his soul or just his skin, he knows that much. These just sting a little when he moves his arms, but if he lies still, they're fine.

His eyelids are heavy today, way too heavy to lift them, and it kind of feels like his entire head is swollen. There's also something sticky on his forehead and when he rolls his head to the side, there is another small tug at the sticky parts.

Something suddenly taps against his forehead. "Sans."

That's the new voice. The scratchy one. Sans has to think for a bit before he remembers it belongs to Gaster. It shouldn't take him that long to recall everything that happened yesterday, should it? Even though a lot happened. But it was all so important, he really should remember it all. Everything feels so sluggish in his head.

"Bit out of it, hm? Makes sense, we have you on quite the painkiller cocktail." Clothes rustle next to him, he hears some taps on a keyboard and the quiet beeping of a monitor. "I'm going to check your eyes now." Before he even finishes talking, two cold fingers pry open Sans' left eye and he winces at the bright, painful light shining at him. The same happens with the other eye and Sans tries hard to keep them open after, even if all he sees are bright shiny stars dancing through his field of view.

More typing, more movement. He can now make out a tall, thin shadow next to him and he immediately feels safer. The black shadow is Gaster, and Gaster was so nice to him. He only hurt him twice and that was of course entirely Sans' fault. But after that, Gaster listened to him. He talked to him, like Alphys did, and he helped him show his writing to the other creators. Gaster is the best creator.

"Hold still," he says now and puts a hand on Sans' fingers. They were still moving around searching for his pen, something that they seem to be doing automatically without him noticing it.

Gaster is holding up a small syringe and snapping his gloved finger against it, then he bends over Sans and turns his arm until he can see the crook. "The dimwits had you an a pretty basic parenteral nutrition formula," he explains, his words kind of hard to understand because they're a bit complicated and also because he's talking around the cap of the needle stuck between his teeth. Sans barely feels anything as the needle enters his arm. "Just enough to keep you alive."

He retracts the needle, spits the cap in his hand and puts it back on, then he throws the syringe over his shoulder as he sits down. It hits the wall calendar and takes it down to the floor with it.

"But we want you alive and functional, so you'll have to stock up on your vitamins. Injections will do for now, but the ultimate goal here is to get you off of PN and eating normally. Look at that!" He holds up one of Sans' hands, only jostling the tube connected to his wrist a tiny bit, and points to the yellow tinted fingertips and the cracked skin of the palm. "Ugh. Yellow's not a good color. On hands or on ‒ anything, really."

Sans thinks of Alphys and her yellow skin. It didn't seem to be a bad color to him when he saw her, but he makes mistakes all the time, so that must have been another one. He decides to still like Alphys, even if she wears yellow.

Gaster claps his hands all of a sudden and then pushes himself away from the table with both hands, his chair swiveling all the way over to the next table. Sans lifts his head to watch him go and can't help but silently giggle at the sight. After grabbing a bunch of paper and a pen, Gaster looks around and notices Sans' amusement, even though he quickly tries to hide his smile behind his hands.

Slowly, Gaster leans his head to the side and grins. His chair begins rolling back and forth a bit as he moves his long legs, Sans watching intently.

With a loud, metallic pang, his foot suddenly connects with the table-leg and he kicks himself backwards, the office chair almost flying through the lab, Gaster's black coat-tails wildly fluttering behind him. He hits the next table with the back of the chair, crashing into it and causing the equipment on top to wobble around precariously.

With growing excitement, Sans is patting his hands against the tabletop frantically, sitting up as far as he can and grinning open-mouthed. A little squeaking sound escapes his throat and Gaster's smile grows even wider at that. "There's that voice! Let me hear that again."

Sans falters just a little bit; that sound was not on purpose. He isn't supposed to be loud, after all. But ‒ he just got a task to make sounds. So it must be alright this once. He nervously licks his lips a few times and opens his mouth, only to find that now that he's actually trying, he can't remember how to make sounds. The few times he does it always just kind of happens. He never means to.

A very low beeping and scratching comes from somewhere to his right and it now steadily grows more frequent as he thinks hard about how to pass this test. In some corner of his mind not occupied with solving the task, he notices that there are cables connected to those sticky patches on his head and that they lead in the same direction that noise is coming from.

With a sigh and a low rumble in his throat, Gaster stands up and walks back over to the table Sans is sat on. He looks off to the right at the machine making those noises and then bends down to Sans again, pulling up another chair from the side. "You're more of a thinker than a doer, huh?" His fingers make two loud snaps right in front of Sans' nose, which startles him out of his anxious thoughts.

They stare at each other for a moment, until Gaster seems to come to a decision. He taps one of the monitors hanging on the wall overhead a few times and then begins to carefully but quickly detach the tubes and cables from Sans' wrists, as well as the round, sticky pads connecting his head to the machine. As soon as he's done, he grabs Sans under the arms and lifts him up. Sans' feet instinctively begin kicking the air and before he can properly process what's happening, Gaster is back in his chair with Sans sat on his knees, fingers wound tightly into the soft sweater the creator wears under his black coat.

Gaster's hands still hold onto him firmly, but not tight enough to hurt. As he begins slowly rolling the chair back and forth, his smile grows back gradually. "You up for a ride, buddy?" he asks with a big grin, amused by Sans' attempts to sway against the movement and keep his balance. He seems to know full well that Sans doesn't even begin to understand the question, so he doesn't wait for any kind of answer and simply uses his feet again to push himself backwards away from the table.

It feels like falling for a minute, but Gaster's hands keep him in place and after just a split second of fear, Sans feels silent laughter bubbling up his throat. He tilts forward and bumps his nose on Gaster's chest when they abruptly crash into a drawer, then swivel around and start rolling even faster to the next one.

They're so fast it gets windy! With a loud laugh, Gaster starts making the chair spin around itself as it goes and a happy little squeak makes its away out of Sans' mouth. "Aw come on, that was meek," Gaster yells, crashing into another office chair and sending it spiraling through the room as well. "Show me what you've got!" He stops for a moment as they reach the opposite wall, slides down in his seat to get a better angle with his feet and pushes them off the wall with even greater force. They careen backwards through the lab, with Gaster throwing his head back and screaming at the top of his lungs.

Sans doesn't even notice at what point his own laughter suddenly got loud. He just knows that he's getting dizzy, but kind of in a good way, and that the speed makes his stomach tickle on the inside. When he does notice he's making all kinds of high pitched, bubbly noises as they roll along, he doesn't bother to make himself stop. Gaster is doing it too, after all, even if Sans can't even begin to sound as loud and boisterous as him, but it seems the right thing to do.

And it feels strangely good.

So good that after he runs out of air, he quickly sucks in a giant breath again and just screams.

"There you go!" Gaster cheers him on. "Going faster!" Glass breaks and metal clanks as they speed up again, bumping into tables and drawers and making some of the equipment on top tumble to the floor. Sans has his hands buried in Gaster's sweater, clutching the thick wool in his fists and leaning backwards into Gaster's grip. It gets really loud with both of them screaming. Some other voice from the side tries to join in, but it gets drowned out quickly and has to fight hard to make itself be heard.

"Dr. Gaster! What ‒ what's going on here?!"

"Science!" Gaster shouts as he swivels past Pollard standing in the doorway. Mid-swivel, he grabs a clipboard from a table and chucks it at Pollard, who just barely manages to catch it by doing a hectic little dance with his hands. "Add that data to your analysis! Also ‒" He finally makes a last turn and screeches to a halt right in front of Pollard, who looks at him with frightened eyes and hides the lower half of his face behind the clipboard. "I know you saw the present I left in your locker. Wear it or go find a new job."

He is very hard to hear over Sans' continued screaming, but nobody told him to stop yet and he feels as if there was so much noise just bottled up in him, it just has to come out all at once now.

Pollard fumbles with the clipboard for a moment and stammers some unintelligible syllables. Gaster interrupts him with an annoyed grunt and pushes their chair off the wall again. "I'm watching you," he says, flicking two fingers back and forth between his own eyes and Pollard's, right before he swivels around a corner and loses sight of him. Sans sees the doors open and then close again.

Their mad pace through the lab has slowed down significantly and now they're just leisurely spinning around in the chair, rolling up and down the aisle. Sans' screaming is getting a bit hoarse and it becomes more difficult to catch his breath. "Tired already?" Gaster asks, not sounding very surprised at all. "Can you do this, then?" He leans forward a bit and when he opens his mouth, his scream comes out with less voice and more air. Sans stops and breathes for a moment, but tries not to think too much and somehow manages it. When he leans in too, he just puts a tiny bit of voice in his breath and makes it a perfect whisper.

Gaster spins them around once and both of them laugh, then he eagerly holds up one finger and Sans instinctively knows that it means he has to listen. Elated about having passed all the tests so far, he sits back and watches as Gaster makes very slow and clear movements with his mouth, opening it first and then, when closing it, compressing his lips until it looks like they disappeared. When he makes a sound again, it's not the A they've been screaming the entire time, but an M.

Excited, Sans' taps his fingers on Gaster's chest in a swift rhythm and he starts bouncing up and down involuntarily ‒ he quickly makes himself stop though, because Gaster's legs are thin and bony and not a good foundation when moving around too much. Since they're slower now, he can let go of the sweater and he curiously presses one hand on Gaster's mouth, the other on his own. There is a steady stream of warm air coming from the creator's nose as he keeps humming the M sound, with little pauses in between to take a breath.

Sans' mouth wants to be open, so he uses his hand to keep it closed and joins in with the humming. It works perfectly without him even having to think much about it! He interrupts himself with a breathless giggle, happy about all the different sounds he made today, and then starts asking himself what other forms his mouth could take to produce even more.

Before the thought is even completely formed, he drops his hand and just lets his mouth run free, moves it like he has seen all the creators do when they talk. It doesn't make words like it's supposed to, but after only screaming and whispering, it sounds so much more like an actual voice. Not as deep as any of the creators' voices, but more high-pitched, similar to Alphys'.

"Abababla!" Sans makes happily, the hand that's still on Gaster's face now curiously moving around, carefully poking at the white skin, following the corner of the mouth as it lifts up.

"Got you babbling," he says with a weird tone of voice that Sans can't quite recognize, but that makes him think the word 'proud' for some reason. Then there's a little cough and Gaster moves Sans' hand away from his mouth where he plunged his fingers inside as soon as it opened. "No, not the mouth. Yuck, look at that." Sans' fingers come away wet and he holds them up to eye level inquisitively.

"Ya," he tries, wiggling his fingers in front of his eyes. "Loo a tha!" Grinning, he thrusts the hand back at Gaster, who quickly pulls his head away and grabs hold of Sans' wrist.

"Alright, getting a bit disgusting here, buddy." He lifts a corner of Sans' gown and uses it to clean off his fingers. "But that's some high quality babbling right there, well done. And it took, what? A few minutes to get you talking?" He stands up abruptly, lifting Sans up with him and carrying him across the room back to the table that he woke up on. In his search for balance Sans wraps his arms around Gaster's neck, dropping his chin on the man's shoulder and proceeding to play around with sounds.

"Ow, ow, owsss," he tries, and even though he can't quite get a grip on the H sound, it does kind of sound like 'House'. He'll have to practice a lot, then he can surprise Grynn the next time he sees her; she really wants him to be able to say that word, she always tries so hard. It will be good to not disappoint here again. "Ast," is his next attempt at a word. "Asta." He pokes the back of Gaster's neck with his fingertips. "Aaaasta!" His mouth doesn't know yet how to handle the G, but maybe it's close enough?

Gaster drops him down on the table covered in a thick blanket. Standing on the table, Sans keeps his grip on Gaster's neck, making the creator bend down. With one hand, Sans goes back to poking at his face, specifically the glasses this time. He's careful not to break anything, but the delicate frame still ends up sitting a little crooked on Gaster's face. "Asta."

"I'm guessing that's my name?"

Sans nods fiercely.

"Good start. Alright, just keep practicing words while I reattach all this stuff here." He picks up the tubes and cables he removed before taking Sans for a ride and pulls a handful of syringes out of a drawer. "Then I can take another look at your soul. Those tears won't fix themselves."

Well, of course Sans' soul still needs fixing, he knew that. He still falters for a bit, weirdly uncomfortable with the thought of being in pain again after he spent all this time today not hurting at all. His grin drops just a bit, but he diligently keeps babbling as he's supposed to. It does come out sounding a bit more whiny than before, though.

Gaster clicks his tongue and shakes his head a little. "No moping, Sans. Do you want to be useful?"

Sans nods again, more seriously this time. "Then what's with the face? Your soul is what's important for our research, so the most useful thing you can do is to let me work with it." He takes Sans' hands away from his neck and the needles go back in his wrists with only little stings. When it's done, Sans begins to sway a bit on his feet, so he sits down on the soft blanket and only then starts to wonder how he even got here. This is not the laboratory where he met Gaster and he seems to remember falling asleep on the floor, not on a table. This room is even bigger than the other lab, even if it doesn't actually look that different apart from the size. It's warmer, though, that's already a big advantage. While thinking, he unconsciously sucks on two of his fingers.

Gaster rummages around in a tall, white cupboard in the corner and comes back to the table with a plastic cup in his hand. When he sees Sans sucking on his fingers, he frowns. Sans quickly drops his hand and cleans it with his gown, smiling when the frown goes away and he gets a praising nod.

With a little hop, Gaster sits down next to him on the table and pats his head lightly a few times. "You did good," he says slowly and the words make Sans perk up in excitement with a wide grin. "Have a treat." He gives the cup a small shake and Sans curiously looks inside. It's filled with thin translucent chips about the size of his thumb and when he carefully touches one of them, it feels really cold and slips away.

Chuckling, Gaster picks one up with his gloved hand and gives it to Sans. "Ice chips with sugar," he explains. "We shouldn't upset your stomach with anything more substantial for now. Just put it in your mouth." Intrigued, Sans pops the chip from his palm into his mouth ‒ then scrunches up his face in surprise. It's so cold! It kind of makes him want to spit it out for a second, but then there's the taste. Sans only knows the taste of blood and that's not a very good one. This one is much better. He waves his hands around in fascination and must pull quite a few funny faces, because Gaster next to him is snorting in amusement. When Sans notices the thing is getting smaller in his mouth, he starts making surprised little sounds and waves his hands even more, trying to tell Gaster about it without opening his mouth.

Still giggling, Gaster turns towards him a bit more and raises both his hands in front of his chest, palms turned inward and the fingers stretched up. "It's melting," he says while moving his hands down and to the side, tugging the fingers in. Then he repeats both the motion and the word a few times, until Sans manages to mimic him, his own hand movement a lot less precise. It seems to be enough though, because by the time the ice chip completely melted away and Sans stretches his arms out to the cup for more, Gaster is nodding approvingly again.

He does pull the cup away and holds up a hand to stop Sans from moving after it, though. "You have to ask before taking things."

Sans leans back, thinking hard, while Gaster puts the cup to the side and looks at some of the syringes he got out of the drawer, ordering them next to him on the table. When Sans is ready to try, he tugs at Gaster's sleeve. "Tee?" is his attempt, which doesn't sound much like "treat", but at least he got it to sound like a question by lifting his voice at the end. He looks up at Gaster nervously, unsure if that's enough.

Gaster's reaction is another snort and a little shove to his shoulder. "Who taught you the puppy eyes, kid? Okay, good start, but let's try that again." He taps all the fingers of his right hand against his lips a few times, moves it over his chest in a small circle and then holds up one finger and wiggles it up and down. "Treat. Please." he says slowly, the words accompanying the first two hand movements. On the third motion, he tilts his head to the side and looks at Sans inquisitively.

He has to do it a few more times for Sans to copy it adequately. It takes him a bit longer to understand that the last sign makes the whole thing a question, but then he recalls Alphys teaching him the question mark and realizes that it works the same way. "Twee pwease?" he finally manages, both saying and signing it, and this time it is good enough, because Gaster finally gives him another ice chip and pats his head again. "Well done," he says. Sans happily rolls the ice around his mouth with his tongue and lets his feet dangle over the edge of the table.

Gaster jumps off the table again, straightening his lab coat a bit, and then goes back to inspecting the syringes, filling each of them with a clear liquid and knocking against them with his finger. "Now, I'll try to make this as painless as possible," he informs him, exchanging his gloves for fresh ones and idly checking some of the monitors. "The strain put on your soul during the last few months was bad enough already, so I'm not taking any unnecessary risks for now. But if I don't at least patch it up a little, it would only take one or two more overloads for it to completely burst into pieces."

Sans' feet movements slow down as he listens. He absentmindedly puts a hand over his chest, wondering what it would feel like if his soul just burst. What would happen to him if it did? He's pretty sure one needs a soul to live. Losing his soul sounds scary.

But Gaster wants to keep that from happening and Gaster is smart and the best creator. Sans only has to do what he tells him, then everything will be fine.

There isn't much that he has to do. Lying down on the operating table, he watches as Gaster injects some of the liquids into the tubes hanging from Sans' wrists and two other directly into his soul. The needles are much smaller than the ones the other creators usually use and it really does barely hurt. Also, Gaster keeps talking to him during the procedure and Sans babbles back, so even when they get to the more painful parts, there is something to distract himself from it.

When Gaster begins feeding a thin, but long tube through his chest into his soul, Sans has to stop talking though. He bites his lips and clenches his fist, trying to breathe through the pressure building up behind his ribs, but it presses on his lungs and makes his mouth taste bitter and unnatural. Twice, he feels a quick shock run through his entire body with a sizzling noise and a smell of something burning.

The second time, the world whites out in front of his eyes and he stays awake, blind but still hearing and feeling everything. For a second, he almost panics, but Gaster talks him through it with words he doesn't really understand. The important thing is that his voice sounds normal, not panicked or angry or as if anything is actually going wrong right now. It helps Sans to calm down, to take a few breaths of air that feels sticky in his mouth and just go back to lying still and listening.

"I'm installing a manual magic outlet directly into your soul. It's barely going to affect you once it's properly in place, but to get it where I want it to be I naturally have to push a bit of junk out of the way. You know, rewind some circuits, disconnect a few nerves and fuse them back together afterwards. Nothing major, but souls are incredibly finicky about having equipment shoved into them, even if it's ultimately an improvement. So don't worry about the eye thing; this little lady" and Sans feels something softly tapping against his soul and it makes him want to throw up, "is just being a drama queen."

It's nothing bad, it's just his soul being stupid again. Of course it is. Sans holds onto that thought tightly, especially when his other senses begin flickering in and out of existence. He almost doesn't notice it when taste and smell are gone and when sensation leaves for a second, it's even kind of a relief.

Then his hearing slowly fades out and the last thing he hears is the whisper of his own screaming, even though it feels like it's ripping his throat to pieces and he knows it should be much louder. But he can't hear Gaster anymore, he can't see anything but white and every few seconds, his entire body goes completely numb. Even the thought that this is supposed to happen doesn't make it better, doesn't change the fact that there is suddenly nothing to tell him he's still himself ‒ but unlike in the void, when shut down, he is now awake enough to care.

He gets the feeling that he was probably injected with something, because the way his panic suddenly leaves doesn't seem normal to him.

When everything comes back bit by bit, he feels hot liquid spill out of his eyes at the sound of beeping machines and Gaster quietly mumbling to himself. He even welcomes the pain in his soul, which is thumping slowly in his chest and lets all his senses fade back in. The first thing he sees is a black shadow above him and he recognizes Gaster even before his eyes can completely focus on anything again. As soon as he grins up at him, Gaster nods and shoves another ice chip between Sans' lips.

"And of course, everything went well," the creator says and somehow it doesn't feel like it's directed at Sans. "Do take note of how I adjusted the plan as soon as something unexpected happened. Now, the largest part of your brain, henceforth referred to as the idiot-part, might tell you to just keep doing what you're doing at that point, but believe me when I say it's always preferable to trust the Gaster-told-me-not-to-be-a-giant-twat-part instead. It'll pay off in the long run."

Oh, he's calling people idiots again, so the other creators must be here! Sans lifts his head to look around, grinning when he sees the three scientists standing behind Gaster and watching. They each have an odd, brightly colored thing on their head and they look very unhappy.

"Requesting permission to remove the dunce caps," Freeda says, even more stiffly than usual and with an undertone that makes Sans think she might also have some kind of pressure building up inside her.

"Request denied," Gaster says cheerfully. Then he immediately switches to an offended sounding voice, pressing a hand to his heart as if insulted. "Come on, I spent almost five minutes picking out the ugliest ones I could find. Look how they absolutely clash with your complexions! I put a lot of thought into that."

Sans thinks they look pretty. Suddenly excited, he remembers that he can now let them know that, so he clumsily sits up and points at the colorful hats. "Pwedy!"

Pollard lets out a loud, desperate sounding guffaw while Grynn and Freeda just stare at Sans with disbelief. Gaster is standing off to the side a bit, typing something and looking away from them. "Oh yeah, by the way, I got him talking. Because I'm objectively better than you."

"Naturally," says Freeda, still sounding unusually irritated. She adjusts her glasses and looks Sans right in the eyes. It automatically makes him sit up straighter and fold his hands in his lap ‒ and only then does he notice the white cable hanging from his chest down to his knees, a little glass cylinder with a single silver button dangling at its end. "That is a magic essence container," she explains when he looks at the thing curiously. "One of our first attempts at managing a monster's magic flow. For normal monsters it is too dangerous, as it affects the soul too directly and cannot distinguish between superfluous magic particle emissions and actual magic essence. You have too much of both, however, so it doesn't pose as great of a risk."

"What makes you think he understood any of that?" Grynn asks. Gaster is still busy with the data, but Sans notices that he still watches the exchange out of the corner of his eyes. "We'd have to first teach him about ME and MP and what it all even means." She rubs her forehead with her knuckles, making the pointy cap wobble on her head. "Ugh. You can't expect us to do that. We're not teachers and this is not a kindergarten."

"Funny, I thought the same thing until a while ago," Gaster answers with a shrug, "but then I actually had to explain the basics of conducting a simple experiment to three of the most accomplished scientists in this building. Can you believe it?"

Grynn has to take a deep breath and Pollard quickly steps forward and starts talking. "Well, what he needs to ‒ uh, I mean," and he hastily turns to Sans to address him directly, "all you need to know is that you press that button when you have a magic overload. Uh... you know what an overload feels like, right?"

With an involuntary cringe, Sans nods and very lightly taps his chest where his soul is. He figured it out by listening to them talk, about waking him up after being shut down and about his magic not behaving like it should. If those are the overloads they mean, they're bad and terrible and he really doesn't want another to happen.

"Only ever press this button when you are sure you're having an overload," Freeda continues. "This machine sucks magic straight out of your soul and unlike us when we do the same with a syringe, it cannot determine the difference between essential and non-essential magic. It is only to be used in an absolute emergency."

"We'll make some adjustments in a few days so it isn't always in the way and you can't accidentally set it off," says Gaster. "Until then, we'll tape it to your body or something. Which one of you was supposed to find clothes for him?"

"My granddaughter will bring some of her discarded clothing," Freeda says and Sans perks up, tapping his fingers on his legs excitedly.

"Al?" he asks, looking back and forth between the creators. "Al-i?"

"Alphys," Freeda corrects dryly.

"Aly!" Sans feels his grin getting wider and wider.

"Hm. Is she here already?" Gaster seems to be done with his data, he shuts off some of the monitors and files away a bunch of of papers.

"She is waiting in the break room."

"As far as you know." Grynn is back to grinning. "You sure she isn't running around in the CORE using your codes to activate the self-destruct mechanism or something?"

Freeda looks at her with death in her eyes. Sans feels like to colorful hat is making her meaner. "Obviously I changed my codes. And her parents are with her."

"How old is she again, six?" asks Gaster, unimpressed by the bickering. "Can a six-year-old sign a confidentiality agreement? Why am I asking, just make her sign one and don't tell the parents, obviously. I feel like I have to point out every single obvious detail from now on, I wonder where that comes from. Does she know how to speak in hands?"

"Not perfectly, but I taught her the basics."

"Alright, I'll need to have chat with her before we send her in. And then you and I have a meeting with Asgore, Freeda."

Pollard scratches his ears nervously. "N-not about all this, right? Does he know anything?"

"And there is the reason why I point out obvious things, thanks for reminding me. No, Dr. Pollard, the king doesn't know about any of this, as you could have deduced from the simple fact that he isn't in here screaming at us about immoral experimentation and all that drivel." Pollard turns a very dark pink under Gaster's stare and visibly exhales in relief when his boss changes the subject. "No, we managed to get Miss Muffet in for negotiations. To prevent things from going sour like last time, Freeda now has the license to kick me in the shins if I get angry again. A license which, by the way, will only be valid during this one meeting, so don't get your hopes up. And take that stupid cap off, you're going to meet the king. At least try to dress properly."

"Does the license extend to kicking you in the shins if I get angry, Wing Ding?"

Gaster ignores her, instead snapping his fingers at the other two as they reach up to their hats with obvious relief. "Hey, no, you keep those on! You don't have shin-kicking or dunce-cap-removing licenses. In fact ‒" He scoops up the hat that Freeda dropped on the floor and deftly sets it on top of Pollard's hat, "‒ you now have double-dunce-cap-duty for the next week."

As the four scientists continue bickering about the hats ‒ or just mocking the others in Gaster's case ‒ Sans scoots around on the blanket impatiently, very quietly practicing some words he could say to Alphys. It sounded like she would come here soon! Hopefully she'll be impressed with his talking. Maybe he'll even get an A+ again? He probably shouldn't get his hopes up, but it's kind of hard to stop himself.

It takes far too long for the creators to sort out their differences, in his opinion. In the end, Gaster and Freeda leave the laboratory, Gaster yelling something like "Cameras everywhere, I'll know if you take them off" at Pollard as the door closes behind them. After that, Grynn and Pollard are angry for a while, especially Grynn who says mean things about Gaster. It's probably not wrong to do that, Gaster said a lot of mean things too, after all. But Gaster is Sans' favorite and it doesn't feel nice to hear them insult him, so he puts his hands over his ears and looks away.

This goes on for a while and he almost starts believing that he misunderstood about Alphys coming, but just then the doors open again and she enters the lab, a big bundle of colorful cloth in her arms that almost completely hides her face. But her three yellow ponytails are unmistakably peeking out from behind the bundle and Sans claps his hands, yells "Aly!" and then quickly stops as she almost drops everything.

"Oh!" She looks up at him, appearing much smaller and a little more scared than the day before, but just as Sans starts worrying that maybe she isn't as happy about this as he is, she smiles and wiggles her fingers to wave at him. "H-hi Sans." She giggles as he waves back, then her eyes flick around the room and to Grynn and Pollard. "I- I'm supposed to give you this," she mumbles shyly, puts down the clothes and holds out a piece of paper.

While Pollard stays close to Sans' table, watching over the readings on the monitors, Grynn goes to talk with Alphys in a low voice. Sans leans forward and tries to hear, but the few words he manages to pick up don't tell him much. It's to do with that paper, it seems, and whether Alphys understood what's written on it. What a stupid question. Alphys only gets the best grades, of course she can read a piece of paper and understand it.

Sans pauses suddenly. He just criticized a creator. Only in his thoughts, yes, but still. And somehow, he's convinced that he was right to do that. How ‒ how weird.

He must be learning from Gaster. Gaster is superior to the others, after all, so the others can make mistakes sometimes, but Gaster doesn't. It has to be a good thing if Sans can recognize that ‒ it means he's getting smarter, right?

When Grynn is done asking questions, she looks at the bundle of clothes Alphys brought and picks out a few that Sans can try on. They make the cable of the magic essence container ‒ or MEC, as they now call it ‒ stick to his chest and stomach with little strips of tape and strap the glass cylinder itself to the belt he has to wear to keep the pants from falling down. The clothes are all very loose and from the creators' unsatisfied expressions he can tell that they apparently don't fit right.

Sans doesn't care about that at all. He's wearing real clothes! They are warm and soft and have pretty colors. There is some kind of flap on the back of the sweater he tries on first, one that he can pull over his head to make it even warmer, and the rim has fur on it. Alphys watches and giggles from behind the scientists when Sans shows her that amazing discovery with broad hand gestures and loud, half-formed words. He has to take the sweater with the 'hood', as it's called, off again; Grynn and Pollard say it's not practical for doing lab work. The shirt with short sleeves he gets instead is very nice too, with its blue color and the picture of a white animal at the front, so he isn't too sad about it.

He does not like the dark yellow pants they pick out. At first he tries to explain that yellow is a bad color, but he's missing too many words for that and so just changes his strategy to pushing their hands away and yelling "No" over and over. It only succeeds in making them angry and in the end, when Pollard's hands are twitching and Grynn looks like she's boiling, he has to give in.

While he sits with his arms crossed and silently sulking, Alphys reaches up to the table and lightly pats his knee. "They're the only ones that fit at least a l-little," she explains quietly. "But if you don't like them, I can bring some different ones next time?" Sans only slowly lowers his arms. He doesn't know when she'll be here the next time, it could be days or weeks during which he has to wear a color that Gaster doesn't like. But he supposes it's better than nothing.

He taps her hand with one finger and leans down to look at her. "Pwomise?"

Alphys smiles with shiny eyes, hides her mouth behind her hands and makes a high-pitched sound that he doesn't know what to do with. "Awww! Y-yes, I promise. Oh, and ‒" after asking for permission from the creators with a quick look, she dives into the pile and comes back to him with a pair of shoes in her hands, "‒ m-maybe these will make it better? They were my favorite, but they don't fit me anymore and, um... I- I wasn't sure if you'd like them, but..."

Before she even finished speaking, Sans is grabbing for the bright, shiny pink shoes, happy bubbling noises tumbling out of him at the sight. Alphys' laugh sounds happy and relieved. "Oh, you like them? You don't even know the best thing yet, look." She knocks one shoe hard on the table and Sans squeaks in surprise and delight as the thick sole lights up, blinking in a flood of bright colors.

Wiggling around with excitement, he points to the shoes and at the creators and stretches out his feet. Grynn and Pollard don't seem very excited for some reason, but they still help him into the most amazing shoes in the whole world and then set him down on the floor, where he jumps up and down, laughing loudly at the lights and holding Alphys' hand for balance. He sees Grynn tuck away another, boring pair, probably to try and make him wear those later, but he already decided that he won't budge on this.

It's lucky for the creators that he's tired from the procedure on his soul, because they don't seem to like it when he laughs and jumps around and are more content when he settles down. A little out of breath, he tries pulling Alphys with him to wander around the lab, but Pollard quickly ushers them to a different table with plain wooden chairs. Sans needs his help climbing up, which Pollard appears to be very uncomfortable with, because he just plops him onto the chair roughly and then immediately takes a step back.

The chair is cushioned with a lot of pillows, but Sans still has some trouble putting his arms on the table comfortably ‒ it seems everything here is just too tall for him. It works alright though, he can see and write on the papers that Grynn puts down in front of them. Alphys brought a book, one with many pictures and words written in very big, colored letters. She also has her own pens in a tiny, sparkly bag that she calls a 'pencil case.' He almost gets too loud and excited again when she gives him a pen that can write in purple.

They look through all the pictures and Sans has to write down the word, learn the hand sign for it and try to say it. Then, after about ten pictures, they start again from the top, only now Alphys covers the letters with her hand so he has to remember everything by himself.

It reminds him a little of Grynn and how she tried to make him talk with holding up pictures, only this is actually kind of fun, because Alphys doesn't yell at him. Instead, she talks about the things in the book and tells him stories about them. "That's a ball, it's what children play with. Th-they, um, throw it around and catch it again. I'm... I'm not very good at that." When he finds something she said especially interesting, he tries to find out more about it. It doesn't always work, because he's not very good at talking clearly yet, but nothing bad happens when he gets it wrong.

"Pway?"

"Oh, play? That's, um... It's when, when you just do something to have fun."

Sans frowns, thinking hard, and writes down a word he can't say properly. Alphys looks at it and she is always patient enough to try and figure out what he wants to say, even if he says it stupidly. "Drawing. You mean, you draw because it's fun?" He nods happily. "Ah. That, yeah, that's kind of like playing, I think."

While they slowly work through the book, Grynn and Pollard sit at the next table, listening to them and watching. Though they mostly just mumble to each other, often saying words like 'doctor's degree' and 'babysitting.' They get more bored and pay a little less attention to Sans and Alphys the longer their work takes.

Suddenly, when Grynn and Pollard are starting to discuss something that takes their minds a bit more off of watching the children, Alphys thumbs through the book, searching for something. Sans folds his hands on the table and sets his chin on it, watching her curiously as she finds a certain page, one that looks very worn. The pages are not like the paper Sans knows, they're more thick and layered like cardboard, and this one is bending a lot and flaking apart at the edges already. With her fingernails, she peels the single page apart, revealing the empty layer in the middle, and writes something there.

Looking over her shoulder quickly, she makes sure that the scientists are still talking among themselves, then she stares at Sans through her round, pink glasses with a very serious face and presses a finger in front of her lips. After that, she carefully slides the book over to him and lets him look at what she wrote.

'Do they hurt you here?'

Sans looks up at her, but just as he opens his mouth, she does the finger gesture again and makes her face even more serious until she almost seems angry. She points at the pen he's holding and taps the space below her own writing on the secret page. Sans understands and writes down his answer.

'yes'

Something happens in her face, something he doesn't know what to do with. She looks sad and scared all of a sudden and really worried about something, but for once, he knows he didn't do anything wrong; he just answered her question, which was simple enough that he couldn't have misinterpreted it. He does wonder why she would even ask that in the first place. Doesn't she already know that he's here so he can become better? That only really works with pain.

With growing confusion, he watches her hands shake as she writes down her next question.

'Do your parents know you're here?'

Sans underlines 'parents' and puts a question mark over it. She makes a small, frustrated sound and scratches out the question before scribbling a new one. It gets harder to read her handwriting.

'How do they hurt you?' She seems extremely anxious already about just writing that down and then wrings her hands nervously as he ponders his answer.

He's not sure how to describe the things they do, so he slowly jots down keywords he can come up with.

'needles' is the first, and while Alphys doesn't look happy, she does seem to calm down a bit. 'For healing? Medicine?' she writes, then crosses it out immediately as she sees his confused expression and lets him go back to writing.

'magic' is next, which makes her go still and kind of hunch up her shoulders. He thinks about how Pollard always tried to keep him down when he fought them or had a seizure, and writes down 'breaks bone.' Alphys gets a bit paler. Less yellow. That's probably good.

Freeda holds his mouth and nose closed when he gets too loud. 'stops air' is the best way he can describe it, because he doesn't even want to think about how to spell 'breath.'

He thinks for a bit and remembers the scratches from Grynn's fingernails on his scalp, the bruises on his wrists and ankles from the restraints. It's hard for him to tell what's important to mention and what isn't, but he doesn't know how to describe these things, so he leaves them out. After looking at his collected words for a little while, he goes back to the first one, 'needles,' and adds 'in soul' behind it. That's actually where most of the pain they give him comes from, so that should be enough.

Alphys' eyes look big and watery, she is still shaking a little and now also breathing very slowly and deliberately. As soon as he looks up to her, signaling that he's done, she grabs the book and scrawls in messy letters: 'They are evil! They shouldn't hurt children! Don't trust them!' She shoves it under his nose vigorously, pointing at it with her pen and then looking straight into his eyes for confirmation that he read and understood. He is so bewildered by this whole exchange that he just nods numbly.

The conversation at the next table is simmering down and Sans sees Grynn and Pollard now glancing over at them again. Alphys seems to realize the same thing, as she carefully takes a glue stick from her pencil case and uses it to glue the page back together, all her motions hidden from the view of the creators by her back. While she presses down on the page to permanently hide the conversation within, she lifts her head and smiles up at him again. "Alright, show me what you've written," she says like nothing happened, pointing to his paper that he wrote the answers to the actual questions on. As they seamlessly slip back into their previous task, Grynn and Pollard watch them with bored expressions and check their wrist watches.

* * *

It doesn't make any sense.

Obviously Sans did things in secret before, knowing that the creators would likely not have been happy about his nightly wanderings through the lab before Gaster intervened. But that was because Sans was doing something forbidden, so he knew he was the one in the wrong and it was easy for him to understand.

Now it's all different. Alphys keeps their talk hidden inside a page, so that should mean what they talked about was wrong. But Alphys is a creator too, isn't she? She works with them, she taught him language all day long and she gets only the best grades. She wouldn't say wrong things.

It's dark now, Alphys left many hours ago, Gaster and Freeda are still not back from their meeting and Grynn and Pollard are doing some work in an adjoining room. Sans lies on a little cot with a real pillow and two blankets, wearing clothes made specially for sleeping in. He can see Grynn and Pollard move about through the stained glass window between the rooms and he knows they can also see him over that little monitor they have in there with them. It's the first time he was ever 'put to bed,' the first time in his life that he is expected to fall asleep on purpose. How does that even work?

So to distract himself from failing yet another test, he is mulling over that very weird, written talk with Alphys. He learned the words she wrote by heart, though he doesn't understand them all. She called him a child, he thinks, what with her 'shouldn't hurt children'-thing when they were talking about Sans being hurt. But he listened to the creators, the people who made him, and not even they seemed sure if he actually is a child.

And what does 'evil' mean?

What does 'trust' have to do with anything?

When one creator says something and another says the complete opposite, then which one is he supposed to believe?

It would be nice not to hurt so much anymore. But if today is anything to go by, then things are getting better, aren't they? Today was fun! He went for a ride, he learned how to talk ‒ in two different ways even. Yes, the procedure on his soul wasn't fun, but that was only to help him and to keep everything from getting worse. And after that he got clothes, got to work with Alphys, even got his own bed.

Maybe the other things before were bad, the things that happened in Lab 4. But even if they really were, then it doesn't matter anymore, because Gaster called the others idiots for the wrong things they did and then made everything better.

Sans thinks it over for only a little longer, but then he rolls on his side and buries his nose in the blankets, content that he solved the puzzle. Alphys just thought they would keep doing the wrong things because she didn't know how Gaster called them names for that and told them to stop.

All the good things happened because of Gaster. He made everything fun and happy today and it will stay like that now. Sans can trust Gaster, because he is objectively better than the others, the best creator, and Sans loves him.

* * *

Sans wakes up with a start when the lights are switched on. It hurts his eyes for a moment and he hides his face in the blankets, his sleep-addled mind trying to puzzle out what's happening. Hard steps and loud clanks echo through the lab, then a knock on the door behind which Grynn and Pollard are working. Slowly, Sans manages to sit up, rub his eyes clean and look around ‒ he spares a glance for the clock on the wall, it's three in the morning. He watches as all four scientists come together in the center of the lab. None of them look over in Sans' direction.

"It's over," Gaster says roughly, arms folded across his chest and his lips pressed into a thin line. "We're not getting Muffet."

Grynn and Pollard exchange worried looks. "There must still be something she wants," Grynn tries. "Anything we can give her in exchange. Surely she's just stringing us along."

"Oh, you're right, why didn't I think of that?" Gaster's voice is dripping with spite and barely contained anger. "It's not like I just spent the entire twelve hour meeting making her one offer after another."

"But she's a business woman," says Pollard helplessly. "It's no secret she's just after money. She'd sell anything for the right price!"

"Not her soul, it seems," Freeda retorts with a definite air of finality on the subject. "And the king will not force her to do anything against her will. We explored every possibility to convince her, to no avail. Purple magic is off the table."

The scientists visibly slump in resignation, Grynn and Pollard tiredly looking at the floor at a loss for words. Gaster is leaning against a table, takes off his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose, his eyes screwed shut. He stays like this for a while, thinking maybe, while the others try not to look at him.

Pollard clears his throat awkwardly after about two minutes, rubbing his neck and shuffling his feet. "Well, at least we have the blue magic to work with now. It's better than nothing, right?"

"Bloody self-centered parasite," Gaster hisses, as if he didn't even hear what Pollard said. "She knows full well what's at stake! I bet she won't hesitate one second to take advantage of our research once it takes off, but actually contributing to it? God forbid!" He pushes himself off the table, his sudden movement and the clear rage filling his eyes making the other three flinch away ‒ even Freeda. "And all the while there's that fucking human, running around with its red soul right there on display. But no, that one's off limits!" His fist smashes against the side of the table and he starts pacing up and down along the middle aisle, his shoulders tense and his hands gesturing uncontrollably. "Oh, the future of all monsterkind? Fuck that shit, it's way more important the prince gets to keep his pet human!"

The other three inconspicuously move backwards, away from the path Gaster paces up and down. A light orange color slowly fills up the air around him with every step. Paper begins to rustle and some test tubes and beakers look like they're vibrating. A low droning sound reaches Sans' ears and he presses his hands over them, but it doesn't succeed in blocking it out.

Gaster's voice abruptly stops getting louder and louder, going right back to its usual scratchy self as he stops short in his pacing. "No red magic, no purple magic." The sudden calm is somehow much scarier than the previous anger and Sans huddles up in a corner of the bed, making himself as small as possible. "Only blue and orange left. Blue is untrained and orange is..." He trails off, absent-mindedly tapping his chest, staring off into the distance.

Freeda holds both of her colleagues back with a quick gesture as they begin whispering and pushing each other forward to try and confront their boss. In the end, one sharp look from Freeda silences both of them and they all stand completely still again.

Gaster pulls himself out of his thoughts and walks over to the glass doors sealing off another chamber within the lab. "I'll be doing more magic compression experiments," he announces monotonously, not even bothering to look back at them over his shoulder. "Don't disturb me." As soon as the doors slide shut behind him, the droning sound and the magic in the lab disperses and instead, orange light begins flickering in the chamber behind the glass.

The glass doors stay shut.

The only thing Sans sees of Gaster the next day is a blurry silhouette surrounded by dancing lines of orange. Crashes and breaking glass can be heard from the chamber sometimes, even some curses once in a while. But nobody goes near the chamber, everyone acts as if they can't even see or hear anything.

Alphys doesn't show up either. Sans spends the entire day practicing speech with Grynn, Pollard and Freeda, and while they're much nicer than before, they're not being half as fun as Gaster or Alphys. Pollard seems even more nervous than usual, Grynn is constantly typing on the little machine she calls a 'phone' and Freeda appears to be doing her own thing, leaving the lab every two hours or so and sitting in a corner opposite from Sans to write her own reports when she returns.

Somehow, they do still pay attention enough to immediately yank him away from the door every time he leans even a little bit in that direction.

They take turns working through books with him, making him write and talk and sign. The second day, they start teaching him about math and science and Sans is distracted from the glass doors for quite a while, because it turns out he's actually good at this! Numbers are so much clearer to him than words, partly because he learned some of it in the tank already, but mostly because he can look at a math problem and just kind of ‒ see the solution. Without trouble.

The damage his soul took from the overloads still needs to be fixed and the little apparatus attached to it has to be made more convenient, but they seem a bit reluctant to do that without Gaster. So they keep the cable taped to his skin and the container strapped to his belt and Sans is very, very careful not to touch any of it, even though the tape makes him itch after a few hours.

The days go by like this, all barely different from the previous one and completely lacking Gaster's or Alphys' presence. At least they can see Gaster, or rather his magic at work behind the glass, so they know where he is and what he's doing. Sans worries more about Alphys. He had planned to explain everything to her the next time they'd meet, to tell her about Gaster and that she was wrong about the scientists. But now she stopped coming and not even Freeda really knows why, apparently.

"My family and I don't have much contact," she explains matter-of-factly. "Alphys is not bound to a specific schedule in the lab, she will visit again when she has the time."

Or never again. That's what Sans hears, anyway. The only thing that calms him down is the fact that she promised to find a better pair of pants for him. Promises, as he learned by now, must never, ever, ever be broken. He doesn't know what happens when you do break one, but it can't be good. Alphys is smart, she must know that too and she wouldn't take a stupid risk.

After one week, Grynn is fed up. She throws her clipboard down on the table, walks over to the glass door and bangs her fist against it three times. "Boss! Cut it out already. Do you even have food in there?"

The doors fly open and with a dull pang, Grynn is enveloped in orange magic and pushed back into the lab. As she fights to keep her balance, the doors already fall shut again with great force, shaking from the impact for a few seconds.

Then, just as everything calms down again, a sandwich swaps against the glass from the inside. They all stare at it as it slides down the door slowly, leaving a trail of mayonnaise and pieces of salad behind.

Pollard chuckles. "Guess there's your answer."

Grynn doesn't seem amused, she straightens her lab coat angrily and collects her clipboard again. "And here I was getting my hopes up that maybe he'd just starve to death," she says, rubbing her chest where there is still a weak, orange glow shining through her skin right where her soul sits.

She remains grumpy for the rest of the day and not even Sans solving all the math problems she gives him manages to lift her mood again. All three of them leave earlier than usual tonight, muttering between themselves and obviously fed up with everything.

With nobody there to give him feedback, Sans gives up on the homework and just goes to bed.

* * *

Sleeping is difficult. The darkness and the remnants of the green after-hours lighting from the corridor make every shadow creepy and dangerous again and his mind makes him hear noise and see movement that isn't there. He tucks himself firmly into his blankets and pulls them up over his ears, facing the wall with his eyes screwed shut.

Time gets away from him when he's like this. It's an odd kind of half-sleep he gets stuck in here, when he's not tired enough to really sleep yet but can't quite bring himself to get up and do anything instead. The ticking of the clock grows very loud until, as his mind drifts off more and more, he suddenly doesn't even notice it anymore.

There is always some creaking and rumbling that he can only hear at night. That's why, when the noises become just a bit more unusual after who knows how many hours, his first instinct is not to turn around and find the source, but to keep still. It does work for a while; some of the noises blend into the weird almost-dreams he's having, like the reverberant clang that becomes the sound of a ball being thrown around by children who all look like Alphys.

But in the end, it seems his mind knows something is different and is dragging itself out of its sleep-like state to listen. Very reluctantly, Sans opens his eyes and turns his head, just far enough that he can look over his shoulder.

One of the shadows came closer. It's hovering right next to his bed, a dark silhouette, ever so slightly illuminated by the rays of dim, green and orange light. Sans stares at it, his soul beating louder and clogging his throat the longer he looks. Something in his mind finally clicks, registering once and for all that this is real, not a figment of his imagination, so he sits up abruptly and scoots back until his back hits the wall.

Still, even though his body feels very tense, as if it's readying itself to run, his mind somehow manages to break through the haze and have him think logically for a bit. His eyes adjust more and more to the darkness and the blurry shadow slowly gains a form the longer he looks at it, until he's almost certain he knows who it is. When a stray ray of light glints off a pair of glasses, he finally manages to calm himself down.

He peels himself out of the blankets and crawls towards Gaster, who is sitting on a chair next to his bed, his arms crossed over his chest and breathing slowly. Sans isn't sure if he should really wake him up, but his curiosity wins out and he pokes the creator's knee.

He barely even touched him when Gaster already jerks awake with a snort, losing his balance in the chair for a moment and tilting a bit to the right, before he immediately catches himself and sits up straight again.

"Ugh," he mumbles, his voice a lot deeper and scratchier than normally. "Of course." He shakes his head once, then claps both hands against his cheeks a few times. "Come on, sleep is for losers!" Rolling his shoulders and adjusting his glasses, he gets up from the chair and wiggles his fingers. Sans can't make out the specific sign in the darkness, but Gaster turns to walk back to the glass doors and probably means for Sans to follow him.

The chamber behind the glass looks almost exactly like that room in the other lab where Sans saw Gaster for the first time. He is starting to think everything here looks mostly the same, only that this lab, Laboratory 1, is the biggest so far. Gaster turns the light up slowly, then leans against a counter top with his legs crossed and takes a moment to clean his glasses.

When he still doesn't say or do anything after a few seconds, Sans very carefully walks further into the chamber. Everything looks a bit brighter than in the actual lab here, but also more breakable. The equipment on the white and gray counters isn't just normal test tubes and beakers, but complicated glass vials formed like spirals or little globes, all connected to each other with thin pipes and filled with clear or colorful liquids. Sans is reluctant to even move at all, in case he knocks something over by accident.

Then again, there is also a lot of broken glass on the floor, swiped provisorily into the corner, so it probably wouldn't be as bad as he thinks.

Finally, Gaster pushes himself off the counter and looks at him. "Sit down," he says, pushing a little stool towards him with his foot, and while Sans obeys, Gaster walks over to the wall and activates one of the flat monitors mounted there. It comes alive with a little click and flashes green writing and symbols that Gaster navigates through by tapping on them. After he apparently gets to what he wanted, he sits back on an operating table in front of it and begins unbuttoning the thin shirt he wears under his lab coat today.

The skin all over his torso looks red and bruised and is covered in thick scars. Much like on Sans' wrists, there are round metal ports fused into the skin, three in a straight line on each side, but they look older and larger than the ones Sans has. The scarring is especially bad around those ports and the surrounding skin is covered in bumps and dents in straight, unnaturally geometric shapes ‒ as if there are some kind of machine parts stuck inside his chest.

While Sans stares at the odd display inquisitively, Gaster plugs some cables from the monitor into the ports and presses a few buttons. He snaps in Sans' direction to steer his attention away from his chest and towards the monitor, where an image of a soul slowly pieces itself together. It's a scan, Sans quickly realizes as he curiously leans forward. The machine parts in Gaster's chest are giving off a soft, mechanical light, the same greenish one that all the monitors in the labs use, and in the middle, a by now familiar orange glow joins in. It doesn't take long for Gaster's entire soul to be scanned and depicted on the monitor.

The heart shape is more narrow than other souls, almost like it lacks mass. On the monitor, it looks a bit see-through, with only a small part in the middle that's still solid. That part is completely orange, but towards the edges of the soul, which look blurry and frayed, the color slowly fades out to white. A net of dark cracks covers the frail thing, all looking like they were just badly glued back together. Sans winces in sympathy and covers his own soul with his hand; just looking at the damage almost makes him feel it in his own body.

Gaster is leaning against the wall, his sharp shoulders unusually slumped, as if he suddenly stopped pretending. His spindly fingers are loosely folded between his legs that dangle listlessly off the table.

"Here's how it is," he begins, and at least his voice still sounds the same, all scratchy and cold and in control. "We need to harvest the magic from dead human souls for our own. See, monster souls, they..." His fingers dance through the air in search for the right words, "Well, they breathe, basically. And the stuff they breathe out is getting dangerous for us all, it's building up around us, filling the mountain, and very soon, it'll destroy us all. But my soul doesn't do that, because when I killed a human, my soul absorbed part of that human's soul." His words slowly become more energetic again. "Not the whole soul, obviously. The effects of doing that aren't very well researched and while there's no doubt it would have given me great power, nobody quite knows what it does to one's mind. I like my mind and I like having it to myself."

Sans heard and read the word 'human' many times, but he's still not entirely sure what it is exactly. Apparently it has a soul and you can kill it, which, judging from the way Gaster said it so dismissively, is not as bad a thing as killing a monster would be.

"See, when the human died, its soul gave off a pulse of energy. Any monster that kills a human will absorb that energy from them and gain power from it ‒ a new kind of magic."

He lifts his hand and a single one of his bullets forms in his palm, a white, simple cube. His soul lights up, the cube turns orange with a clanging sound and then it flies toward one of the blueprints hanging on the wall, gliding past it, rotating around itself. The cube rips apart the paper, but when it continues on its flight and touches a little spinning machine on the counter, nothing happens.

Sans remembers having his own soul turned orange and his sudden desire to move around, but he stayed still and that's when he got hurt. He snaps his fingers as he gets it. "Keep moving!"

The cube vanishes and Gaster nods with a grin. "Yep. And look at you, talking like a champ already."

Sans smiles proudly. He did practice a lot this past week.

"But the point of this is not to be more powerful in a fight," Gaster continues. "The point is that this human soul magic actually changes how my soul works. It doesn't breathe anymore, because those same particles a normal monster soul would normally breathe out, my soul now uses to power its orange magic. Do you understand?"

Sans nods slowly. The breathing of the souls is the problem. Killing a human stops the breathing. "Monsters kill humans," he says. "Monsters safe."

"That would indeed be the ideal solution, if every single monster could find a human and kill it. But humans live on the surface and they don't fall down here often, so that doesn't work. What we have to do instead is figure out a way to transfer this power to others. Thing is, we only have my soul to experiment on. The guy who killed the blue human soul did so by accident and then killed himself, because ‒ I don't know, guess he was sad about it? Muffet got the purple one, but is too much of an egotist to share. The red soul is unattainable. My soul, well, you can see it for yourself." They both stare at the image on the screen, Sans still with an empathetic prickling in his whole body. "It's gotten weak. There was a lot of trial and error involved in this research and it didn't go over very well."

He carefully unplugs the cables, the scan on the screen fizzles out and he buttons up his shirt again. Leaning forward, his hands grasping the edge of the table, Gaster looks Sans directly in the eyes. "I can't afford to keep going like this. Only one more mistake and I'm dust. Which is actually a risk I would take for the benefit of monsterkind ‒ hell, I have been taking it for years now. But if I die, we also lose the only person in the underground who has a chance to figure this out. And that's not me being narcissistic, that's just plain fact."

Gaster could die? As in, a soul being terminated. As in, a soul bursting into pieces! Sans' insides turn cold at the thought. He just met Gaster, he wants him to stay at least a little while longer.

"There is still another way to do this, though," says Gaster, turning around towards the screen again and tapping some buttons, Sans eagerly scooting forward on his stool to pay close attention.

An image of a blue soul flickers into being on the screen. A thick, round, deep blue soul with streaks and tears covering its surface and leaking fluid, but not cracked open and patched back together like Gaster's. Sans looks down at his own chest, then up at the screen again. He doesn't know how the picture gets up there, but it's definitely his soul.

Gaster pulls up another stool, just barely taller than the one Sans is sat on, and crouches down on it right in front of Sans. He takes off his glasses and leans forward, his face all serious and determined. Sans has never seen his eyes from this close and while the right one is droopy and almost invisible, the left one is like a black, bottomless pit, swallowing all light around it. Somehow, even without a pupil, it still feels like its looking right at him, right inside him even.

"It's not optimal. Your soul isn't exactly like a monster soul that absorbed a human's life energy ‒ but it's close enough. It's damaged and unstable, albeit not as much as mine, and also untrained and undocumented, so we'd have to start from scratch. But we learned a lot of lessons from our previous attempts. That means we can avoid a lot of the stupidly risky things we did to my soul that made it look the way it does now." He puts his hands on Sans' shoulders, his gaze not wavering even once and only growing more intense. "Sans. I need you to be our next test subject. It's the only way I can come up with, the only way we all still have a chance to save monsterkind."

Sans is nodding hectically long before Gaster finishes talking. He doesn't really know what he means with 'monsterkind' ‒ he figured out by now that there must be even more monsters living somewhere else, somewhere that's not the lab, but he doesn't know them and doesn't care about them. He loves Gaster, though, and if there's anything he can do to save Gaster, he has to do it.

"You have to be sure about this," Gaster says. "I can't risk starting a whole new line of experiments and abandoning a good part of our research up to this point, only for you to back out later. I have to be certain you're not going to waste my time, do you understand?"

Sans thinks about this for a few seconds, his fingers twitching nervously in his lap while he searches for a way to convince Gaster he's being sincere. Then he looks up at him and very carefully stretches out a hand to lay on Gaster's chest, where his broken, frail, paper-thin soul is slowly beating in its constant fight to stay alive.

"Promise," Sans says. He nods once, reinforcing the word as much as he can. "Promise."

Gaster smiles at him and lets go of his shoulder to lightly pat his head. "Good boy."

* * *

He has to change back into his hospital gown with the hole in the front. It makes it easier to access and measure his soul, the scientists explain. They're making sure it's warm in the lab though, so it isn't all that bad.

Grynn, Pollard and Freeda become a lot more motivated than they appeared during the last week. As soon as Gaster explains to them that Sans will be their new primary test subject, they are incredibly relieved and immediately start setting up schedules for experiments, writing up plans and arguing about methods.

While they do that, Gaster takes a 'power nap,' as he calls it, slumped over Sans' cot with his arms and legs hanging off in funny angles. Sans, meanwhile, sits on his stool in the corner and eats sugary ice chips. And something called a cracker. That one's weird, because it doesn't melt in his mouth and he actually has to take it apart with his teeth before he can swallow it. But it's an entirely new taste and experience, so it keeps him occupied.

It takes them about an hour to make the first plans, then they take his food away and sit him down on a chair in the middle of the lab. Freeda starts working in the corner on feeding data into some computer program, Pollard disappears to do some other important things in other important places and Grynn uses a small, whirring machine to cut off all of Sans' hair. It feels so weird that he has to spend the next few minutes curiously rubbing his scalp, trying to get used to the feeling. On the left side it even feels better than before; that's where he has a lot of permanent scratch marks and tiny scars from Grynn's fingernails. They were always itching when he had hair growing there, but now he barely notices them.

But of course that's not why she did it, he realizes very soon, when she begins covering his head with the small, round stickers that have thin cables hanging from them, connected to the machine that can measure brain waves.

Grynn is the one who talks to him the least. Freeda occasionally explains things to him with lots of words he doesn't know, but at least she tries to make him understand. Pollard talks to him when he knows that Gaster is watching and even though he is always incredibly nervous, he is easier to follow, which Sans likes. But Grynn barely talks to him directly, only ever about him to others. It makes Sans feel very small.

So when she begins applying another handful of round stickers to his chest ‒ these ones feeding into a different machine ‒ he carefully points at them and practices saying the colors. "Red?" He makes it sound like a question, even though he knows he's right. Questions often make the creators talk to him more than statements.

She ignores him though, even when he repeats the question a few times. "Red? Red. Red?" Her face grows more pinched and annoyed, but she doesn't look at him and instead concentrates on putting the stickers in the right place, checking the machine every once in a while.

Sans huffs, just a little bit offended. He picks up a sticker she hasn't applied yet, a yellow one, and waves it around right in front of her nose. "Blue," he says loudly and decidedly.

Grynn gets a grip on his wrist and pushes his hand out of her face. "Yellow," she corrects him, irritated but convinced that that's the end of the conversation.

"Blue," repeats Sans, holding it up again and grinning.

Grynn stops what she's doing for a second and looks at him with a frown. "No," she says slowly, picks up a blue sticker and shows it to him. "That's blue. Yours is yellow."

"Nuh-uh," Sans shakes his head with a giggle. He points to the blue one. "Red." He holds up the yellow one. "Blue." Then he picks out a green one. "House."

With dangerously narrowed eyes, Grynn watches his antics and actually huffs out a tiny laugh. "Are you taking the piss?"

Grinning widely and barely able to keep himself from laughing, Sans drops all the stickers and points at Grynn's nose. "Dimwit."

Grynn immediately swallows her little laugh, furrowing her brow. "No."

"No?" Sans tries to hide his smile behind his hands. He knows she doesn't like it when Gaster calls her that, but apparently he can only get her to talk to him by doing things she doesn't like. When he wants to point at her again, he accidentally goes a bit further than intended and bumps his fingers against her nose. She doesn't pull her head back though, so he improvises and takes her nose between his fingers. "Listen!" That's what she says to him when she tries to teach him something. "Listen, listen, listen. Dimwit."

"Okay, no, that stops right now." She takes his hand away and even though her words sound angry, she's smiling now. "The only dimwit here is Pollard. You call him that from now on, understood? Leave me out of this."

"No!" Sans yells, raising his arms up over his head triumphantly. "All dimwits!"

Behind them, Gaster suddenly chuckles and pats Sans on the back. "You can't fool him," he says to Grynn through a mouthful of the sandwich he's eating. "Kid's too smart."

Grynn immediately looks as if something smells really bad. "When did you even get up?"

"Right around the time you started letting the three-year-old mess with you. High five, by the way." He wipes one hand off at his coat and holds it out to Sans, who happily claps his own against it. "Now, do you want to keep arguing about colors for a bit or are we ready to start?"

"You're the one who was sleeping up until now!"

"Power napping. Helps to keep my brain cells alive, you wouldn't understand." With Grynn glaring at him, he takes another huge bite of the sandwich and walks across the room to check on Freeda.

Grynn goes straight back to business, but Sans still files that interaction away as a huge success. It was the first real one he had with Grynn and by the end, she was laughing. Now he's actually kind of sad that Gaster interrupted them, he would have liked to see where else that conversation could have gone. He'll have to try lying about colors and calling her a dimwit again another time.

He ends up being attached to five different machines. One to measure the things happening in his brain, three to measure the things happening in his soul and one to display all kinds of vital signs on three different monitors. It's a giant mess of cables, tubes, beeping and scratching sounds around him, but somehow, the scientists still know exactly what's going on.

Sans is sitting in a metal chair with a very high backrest that's far too big for him. It looks like it was made for someone of Gaster's size, who is tall even for a grown-up, and Sans feels a bit like he's drowning in the thing. Though it helps that they put restraints on him, wide strips of hard black fabric across his arms, legs, shoulders and waist. That at least stops him from sliding down in his seat.

"Just a precaution for now," Gaster explains as he tests how tight the restraints are. "The results of any of these tests will be a lot more accurate if you don't move around at all. For today, we just need you to do simple magic while we take readings. We want to make sure it functions the same way that my soul does. If the blue magic particles in your soul react as we expect them to in a normal monster soul that absorbed some human life energy, we can get on with the next tests. If they don't ‒ well, then I'll have to demolish this fucking lab and figure out a better way to save monsterkind."

"So, no pressure," Grynn says dryly and Sans stares at her happily without knowing what to say. She spoke to him! Without him having to insult her first!

"He has no influence over these results anyways," says Freeda, testing a set of three syringes. The big syringes, the ones that hurt. Sans tries not to look.

A feeble attempt, as it turns out, because Gaster picks one up and shows it to him. "I'll inject this into your soul," he warns him, shortly before he already does it. Out of reflex, Sans suppresses the pained noise he wants to make by biting his lips. "It'll make the particles easier to pick up for the machines."

He takes the next one and jabs it through the transparent skin on Sans' chest into the crown of his soul. Sans winces, but only once and very quietly. "If this preliminary test goes as planned and gives us the confirmation we need to continue with this line of research, we will take measures to make future injections less troublesome." The third needle goes in and this time, Sans can't help but whimper in pain. After only one week of being spared from procedures like this, he already kind of forgot how bad they are. But he can get used to this again, he knows he can. He managed months of constant pain before he met Gaster and he got really good at enduring.

"Just keep lying still." Gaster hands the used syringes off to Freeda and then stares at the monitors, adjusting something on one of the tubes feeding into Sans' arm. "Alright, everything looks good." He snaps his fingers in Grynn's direction, who hands him a small plastic cup.

He holds it up in his hand for Sans to see. "Now, I want you to use a dash of your magic on this. Don't make it fly around wildly like before, just put magic on it and keep it there. Nothing crazy, okay?"

"Never thought I'd hear you say the words 'nothing crazy' and mean them, boss," Grynn smirks. Even Freeda pushes up her glasses with an amused little breath at that.

"I surely am losing myself," Gaster sighs dramatically towards the ceiling.

Sans can't bring himself to laugh, he's still caught up in the heavy feeling of his soul and now also the nausea that comes with it more often than not. Still, he manages to pull himself out of it a little and swallows hard a few times in a row, trying to find his magic.

It takes a little longer this time. Before, he often used his hands to just tap at his chest a tiny bit, prompting the soul inside to spark magic. But he used it by accident before, without the touching, so he knows he can do it. In the end, he simply imagines poking at his soul. The thought is barely fully formed when he hears the little _~ting_.

Gaster pulls his hand back, just as the cup drops straight to the floor with a heavy clank. Luckily it doesn't break, just sits there on the floor with a coat of blue magic surrounding it.

That was surprisingly easy, Sans thinks, and smiles up at the creators.

They don't notice. The moment they realized it's working, they all turned their eyes right to the monitors, intently watching the lines and numbers jumping up and down there. "Now keep it there," Gaster just quickly orders, blindly waving his hand at Sans and the cup.

Well, keeping it where it is is not an issue, seeing as the cup doesn't exactly try to fly away or anything. So Sans just sits there, keeps the magic flowing through him with barely even more than a thought and watches as the creators write things down, click through the data on the monitors and compare it with other data they pull from other monitors.

After the pain and nausea slowly subside, it mostly just becomes boring. Sans tries to busy himself by thinking of the language and math lessons he's had so far.

He's almost fallen into something of a trance-like state ‒ continuously spending his magic, even as small an amount as this, still tires him out quickly ‒ when Gaster suddenly punches the back of the chair in triumph, making Sans jerk back into awareness and making the cup perform a little hop in the process. "Yes!" Gaster shouts, pacing for a short moment with very hard steps, shaking out his shoulders and smiling all the while. "Alright. Alright! This is good, this is a start."

"We still need to backtrack about five years of research," Freeda reminds him, but Grynn elbows her in the side before she can keep talking. Gaster looks annoyed anyway.

"Why yes. You will notice how I said 'it's a start' and not 'it's over, we won, we won't have to do anything ever again, ever.' Please listen when I talk, my words are often terribly informative." He stops and takes a deep breath, presses his hands against his temples and then straightens his lab coat. Turning around on the spot, he searches for the cup, which jumped a bit to the side, and then focuses Sans' attention back on it with a quick succession of snaps with his fingers. "Pick it back up."

Sans does so, even though he's tired, and lets the cup float up from the floor a few feet, then drops it back down. Gaster nods, his grin seemingly stuck on his face now. "As I thought. It's not actually perfect gravity control, just an increase in force and a change of direction. Which is harder Sans, making it fall down or making it float?"

That's an easy question. "Float." He always tries to move things by making them fall down in the right direction. He can make something fall towards the ceiling or a wall, but keeping it in the air is really difficult, because he has to pull it into many different directions until they balance each other out.

Gaster is still excited, or relieved, or a mixture of the two, as he keeps pacing and looking more at the screens than at Sans. It makes Sans a little bit sad ‒ but he knows of course that this is not about him. Things never are.

The creator's mumbled theorizing about gravity is interrupted by a shrill little beep. With an annoyed frown, he pulls the pager from his pocket and looks at it, then rolls his eyes. "Fucking Pollard," he mumbles as he turns around and starts heading for the door.

Before he has even put the beeper away again, the door already slides open and a very disheveled looking Pollard bursts into the lab.

"Dr. Pollard," Gaster greets him with a sneer. "You do realize how pointless it is to page me with an emergency without telling me the what, the where or the who, right? Especially if you're just two seconds away from telling me in person anyway."

"Sorry, really sorry, Dr. Gaster," Pollard wheezes. His lab coat is sitting lopsided on his shoulders, his ears are pressed back against his skull and he leans his hands on his bent knees to catch his breath. "I saw Alphys and, uh, presumably her parents heading towards the lab, sir."

Sans immediately perks up at the name, but doesn't want to interrupt, so he just keeps listening. "Presumably?" Gaster seems entirely unimpressed. "Surely you stopped them, seeing as they don't have clearance to enter this area?"

"I would have, Dr. Gaster," Pollard says loudly, close to panicking. "But they were with Asgore." There is a beat of silence. "King Asgore is on his way here. And he looked really ‒ really displeased."

Gaster stands very still for a moment. With a deep, slow breath through his nose, he then folds his hands in front of him and gives Pollard a cold stare over the rim of his glasses. "Next time, Dr. Pollard, you might want to lead with that."


	6. Policies of Negotiation

**Policies of Negotiation**

Standing frozen in momentary stillness, Gaster thinks. Instead of panicking, he prefers to plan, so while his subordinates look around in disbelief and growing anxiety, he is quietly formulating a strategy.

When he is done, Grynn already has half a notion to unplug Sans from all the machines and hide him away in a cupboard somewhere before the king arrives. Gaster slaps her on the wrist before she can do anything stupid like that ‒ as if Asgore wouldn't have the place searched ‒ and grabs a syringe with a fast working sedative from the drawer.

"Try to act somewhat like normal people, alright?" he quickly advises his wide-eyed gaggle of scientists. "And let me do the talking."

Sans watches him with interest like always. Even when he's scared, he's still curious, Gaster notes with a pleased smile. It's a very good premise for future research.

But he doesn't waste time dwelling on that now and administers a large dose of the sedative without further ado. Even before he throws the needle away, Sans' eyes glaze over already and his head drops down onto his chest. Just as Gaster has removed his gloves and thrown them on top of the needle in the trash, he hears the clicking of someone typing in their code at the door and he walks a few steps away from Sans, standing in the middle of the room and watching the door calmly.

It slides open not a second later to reveal the king of all monsters. Well, part of him, at least. Gaster really shouldn't laugh, but the fact that every single door in the underground is just too small for Asgore never stops being funny to him. He has to awkwardly duck his head and shuffle into the lab, the large horns on his head scraping along the frame as he goes. When he makes it inside and straightens up again, the little girl with the yellow scaled skin scurries in behind him, followed by her furious looking parents.

Gaster takes a step forward and bows his head a tiny bit. "Good morning your majesty. What an unexpected ‒ occurrence. Can I offer you anything?"

Asgore looks down at him. He is about the only person Gaster ever met who is actually taller than him and he doesn't like it much. At least he has the advantage of actually knowing the man and his soft personality, so he stopped being intimidated by his sheer size and muscle mass about ten seconds into their first meeting.

The others who don't get to meet him as often don't have that privilege. Somewhere behind him, Pollard is breathing louder and louder in his poor attempt to reign in the panic.

"Sadly," Asgore begins with genuine sadness in his deep voice, "I'm not here for a friendly chat, Dings." It seems as if he intends to keep talking, but then he looks past Gaster to the seat that Sans is strapped into, almost invisible behind all the cables and tubes that connect him to the beeping and blinking machines. Asgore's mouth drops open in shock and Gaster can see his Adam's apple jump up and down in his attempt to find his voice again. "Oh," he finally makes, the little sound hardly more than a breath. "I ‒ honestly, up to this moment, I was really hoping this was all just a misunderstanding."

The little girl ‒ Alphys was her name, Gaster believes ‒ steps forward hesitantly, only held back by her parents' hands on her shoulders. "Sans?" she asks with a quiver in her voice, trying hard to establish eye contact with Sans across the room.

"What?" says Gaster, turning around to look at the experiment as if he never saw it before. "Oh, that? Ah, I see, this probably looks like all kinds of bad for someone who doesn't know what's going on. Let me explain ‒"

"I don't need you to explain, Doctor," Asgore interrupts, his bearded face finally turning stern, bordering on angry. "I can very well see the situation for myself." He walks over to Sans with heavy steps, Grynn, Pollard and Freeda hastily making room for him as he bends down in front of the chair. The network of cables seems to intimidate him a little as he searches for a place to put his hands. In the end he settles them on the edge of the chair next to Sans' legs, then bends down and tries to look at the kid's face. "Hello child," he says low and gently. "My name is Asgore. Don't be afraid." When he doesn't receive any kind of response, he turns around towards Gaster and glares at him as best he can. "Release this child."

"I can't recommend doing that." Gaster still hasn't moved from his spot in the middle of the lab, right between the door and Sans' chair. Though in his attempt to keep an eye on both the king and the weird little family still standing in the doorway, he had to spin around himself a little. "It's kind of in a delicate position, yanking it out now would just damage it."

Asgore takes his eyes off of him before he finished talking ‒ rude! ‒ and glares at the three other scientists now. "Take this stuff off of him. Right now." Grynn, Pollard and Freeda exchange worried glances and then look at Gaster for help, which actually makes Asgore clench his fist in rising anger. "Don't look at him. I am your king and you will do as I say."

Luckily he doesn't see how Gaster still gives them the go ahead with a little wave, so he believes they actually listened to him when they come forward and carefully disconnect the cables. While they are busy, Gaster inconspicuously fumbles with the pager in his pocket.

Alphys wriggles out of her parents' grasp and Gaster watches her intently with narrowed eyes as she, too, approaches Sans, laying her hand on his and standing up on her tiptoes to try and look at him. Her parents follow her for a few steps, carefully assessing the situation with wary glances at both Gaster and the king.

"H-hi Sans," Alphys stutters worriedly. "Are you okay?" Unsurprisingly, there is no reaction. Gaster doubts the kid can even hear any of them right now. Alphys does not seem happy with this, however, as she reaches up to his shoulders and starts shaking him a little. "Please say something!" she begs, sounding close to crying. Sans' head lolls to the side and a bit of drool drops down his chin.

Freeda pushes Alphys back lightly. "Don't do that."

With a small hiccup, Alphys turns around to look at her parents, but she doesn't leave Sans' side and puts her hand back on his. "He wasn't like this!" she cries, causing her father to quickly step forward and pick her up, even though her gestures clearly suggest she doesn't want him to. "It's alright sweetheart," the mother mumbles to her and Gaster rolls his eyes and turns away from the display.

Unfortunately, that only has him meeting Asgore's furious look. "Gaster, so help me, if you have done any lasting damage to this child..."

"I haven't, and it's not a child. This might be hard to understand for someone without an academic background, so I'll try to make it simple ‒"

"I don't need scientific knowledge to see what's going on here!" Asgore waits until all the machinery is disconnected from Sans, then he very carefully picks him up, supporting his head with one giant hand as one would with a newborn. He watches the kid intently, searching for any sign of awareness, and raises his head to glare at Gaster when he doesn't find anything. "He's completely out of it, what in the world have you given him? Did you drug him? Did you drug a _frigging toddler_ , Gaster?" He takes a deep breath after his little outburst and rubs his forehead, then looks at everyone with a very apologetic frown. "Please excuse my crass language, everyone. I'm very upset."

"Yeah, you better be sorry," Gaster says with a serious nod, crossing his arms over his chest. "I don't think I can talk to you if you're going to use such disgusting language. You should probably go lie down somewhere until you're calm enough to discuss this."

Asgore turns around with a snap, fully facing him and staring him down with a dark look in his usually gentle eyes. "Do you honestly not understand the position you're in?" he says, slowly raising his voice, which Gaster mostly finds fascinating; he didn't think the king was actually able to do that. "I am very much on the brink of never letting you set foot in this building again, and you really believe now is the best time to mock me!"

"Well, at least you noticed I was mocking you, I'm actually kind of proud of you for that," Gaster admits and then points at Sans, looking incredibly frail and tiny in Asgore's bulky arms. "Can you put the thing down, please? With the way you're jostling it you're going to knock something loose." They stare at each other for a second before Gaster's pager goes off and he breaks the tension to look at it. "Great, there seems to be some kind of trouble with the coolant system in complex C3, so if we could hurry this up a bit? It's not like you're actually going to fire me, so how about we just get on with the finger-wagging and put this whole thing behind us?"

It's like a storm cloud suddenly descends onto the lab. Like lightning, pure rage flashes in Asgore's eyes as he straightens his massive shoulders, drawing himself up to his full height for possibly the first time Gaster has ever seen. "Enough!" he shouts with a voice like thunder, making everyone but Gaster flinch in surprise and fear. He takes one step forward and it feels like the floor is shaking under his weight. "Wing Ding Gaster, do not try to talk your way out of this one. I can _see you_ conducting illegal experiments on a child!"

"No you can't. I'm not doing any of that."

Asgore swipes his hand out aggressively and Grynn and Pollard actually jump backwards a bit. "Silence! This is an outrage! I have made it clear to you again and again that I do not condone this kind of disgusting conduct. You defy my direct orders, you lie right to my face and you have the gall to stand there and act like you are in the right!" Breathing in deeply through his nose, he closes his eyes for a moment and then opens them to look Gaster directly in the eyes. Uh-oh. "Gaster, I ‒"

"Oh, don't go there," Gaster quickly interrupts.

"I will go there if I have to," Asgore rumbles through clenched teeth.

"Well, you really don't have to!"

"Gaster!" he says warningly, his face dark and threatening. "I am" he pauses for another second, " _so disappointed_ in you."

"Ugh," mumbles Gaster, dropping his head a little and pinching the bridge of his nose.

Alphys somehow managed to escape her father's hands and now stands close to Asgore, looking back and forth between Sans and Gaster. "What did you do to him?" she asks with a whiny voice that immediately grates on Gaster's nerves. "H-he isn't even l-looking at me. Sans! Can you hear me?"

The father puts a hand on her shoulder and glares at Freeda across the room. "This is a new low, even for you, mother," he says, apparently using the lull in conversation between Asgore and Gaster to butt in with his own insignificant opinions. "This is the kind of work you do here? The work that's so much more important than your own family?"

"You should refrain from passing judgment on a situation you don't even fully understand," Freeda coldly reprimands him.

"Don't start with that, we're not stupid," the mother snaps at her. "You're experimenting on children. How dare you involve my daughter in this!"

"Okay, wow," Gaster quickly cuts her off, clapping his hands to regain everyone's attention. "I don't know about you guys, but this is getting too disgustingly domestic for me to handle. How about you people take your family drama outside while ‒"

"Do not presume to be in a position of command right now," Asgore angrily interrupts him, though he seems to have mostly calmed down from his short episode of genuine wrath. "You have lost the privilege to decide what to do."

In his pocket, Gaster's pager beeps frantically again and he takes it out to quickly press a bunch of buttons. "Alright, fine," he mumbles. "That's completely fine. Core coolants are still on the fritz, apparently, and I'm stuck here without the privilege of command, this is simply wonderful." He lifts his head and smiles at the king sweetly. "Asgore, dear friend. I humbly propose to send the annoying people away so that the grown-ups can sort this out in a civilized manner. Doesn't that sound swell?"

Asgore shakes his head sadly. "Seeing all this, I am unfortunately starting to believe that actual civilized behaviour is beyond you." He turns to address Freeda and her family. "However, I would still ask you to please not argue over private matters right here and now. That should not be our priority when we have a child to take care of." Even though Sans has been little more than a puppet in his arms the whole time, Asgore still looks at him and keeps trying to communicate. "Who are your parents, small one?"

Alphys speaks up with a little sniff. "His name is Sans." She has gone very quiet, so that's at least one less annoyance in this whole situation. "I don't think he h-has parents."

"Ah, Sans. Thank you, little Alphys." This time though, Asgore doesn't try again to talk to Sans, he just looks at him sadly for a few moments and then lifts his head heavily. "Where did you get this child, Wing Ding? What did you _do_?"

Gaster snaps his fingers and points at him triumphantly. "See, there you go finally asking the right questions! Without even being aware of it, too. As it happens, I didn't do anything."

Grynn and Pollard visibly grow more nervous, probably expecting him to throw them under the bus, while Freeda simply stares ahead in her robotic manner, willing to accept whatever is to come next.

Asgore's glare on the other hand intensifies and Gaster hurries to wave his hand through the air in a hopefully calming manner. "At least not in the way you're no doubt imagining right now." He lifts his shoulders and chuckles, tilting his head to the side in a mockery of disbelief. "What, you think I stole a child from some unsuspecting pair of parents? Why of course, that absolutely sounds like something I would do! I probably went ahead and straight up murdered the parents, didn't I? And afterwards I just finished my everyday routine of hiding under children's beds in the night to feed off of their nightmares and steal all their candy when they're not looking."

"You don't like candy," Asgore says tiredly.

"Really." Gaster stares at him over the rim of his glasses. "That's the one thing on that list that you find a bit far-fetched? That's, you know, that's actually very interesting, says a lot of different things about the both of us. Not my point, though."

With a deep sigh, Asgore finally appears as if he folds into himself again, his instinct of slouching so as to not bump his horns against the ceiling making him seem smaller and rounder than he actually is. Still impressive, of course, but after having seen him fully angered and yelling, his usual way of carrying himself suddenly looks even less intimidating. "I do not think I can muster up the patience for this today." He is definitely tired now, almost resigned, and he waves the girl and her family towards the door with a slow gesture. "I will have security detain you four in here until I know Sans is properly taken care of. It should not be long, so please, behave. We will have a long talk after I return."

The parents seem incredibly relieved to be able to leave this place, while Alphys just clings to her mother's pant leg looking defeated. Asgore has to adjust his grip on Sans before he slowly starts moving towards the exit, paying a lot of attention to not jostling the child around, so the family is out of the door long before him. Before they have even fully turned around to watch Asgore while they wait for him, Gaster jumps forward and hastily punches his code into the keypad. The doors slide shut with a bang and the red emergency light on top flares up to signal a lock-down.

Asgore stops short and stares up at the light in surprise. "What ‒?"

"Wing Ding," Freeda says in a warning tone, as she and her colleagues exchange wary glances with each other. Gaster ignores her, as she'd only tell him how it was a bad idea to lock King Asgore in the lab with them and bla bla, nobody needs to hear that right now.

"Asgore, it's an artificial soul, not a child," he explains shortly, knowing he's slowly running out of time. "How about you listen to me instead of rushing ahead without having a single clue about what's actually going on."

Shaking his head sadly, Asgore gives him a long, somehow pitying look. "I don't know if you have anything to say I'd be willing to believe. Please stop stalling and open this door."

"I'd rather not talk about the nature of my work in front of people who have no business knowing about it and who are probably even more narrow-minded than what I already have to deal with here." Gaster stands with his back to the door, facing down the king with a determined frown. "It's artificial. As in, we grew it in the lab and it's therefore not an actual child. I realize it looks like one and that does funny things to your big cuddly heart, but just stop for a moment and think. What's more likely here, me kidnapping and drugging a random toddler or me working with the slightly uncanny result of an experiment?"

When his only answer is stoic silence, he knows he's on the right path. He carefully takes a step closer to the king, lowering his voice to make it sound more sincere. "Look at that soul, Asgore. Just the fact that it's visible should already tip you off. And you know what a color like that means. You know who killed the blue human soul and what happened to him, so how would you explain this?" Asgore stares at the deep blue soul in the chest of the unresponsive monster in his arms, finally taking a moment to look at the thing he'd been ignoring this whole time. When he slowly lifts his eyes again, Gaster has come even closer and meets his gaze head on.

"I made this," he lies insistently, ignoring the mixture of relief and discontent happening on the faces of his subordinates behind Asgore's back. "It's an imitation of a soul, but it's not real. Like a stuffed animal. Looks like an animal, but isn't one. It's that simple, and you're overreacting that much."

"Overreacting? I can't have any certainty about anything you tell me here! Even if all that is true, you still kept this a secret from me. This is the kind of shifty science that I don't want happening in my kingdom, as you well know."

Gaster throws his arms up in irritation. "Oh for fuck's sake," he groans. "Your definition of shifty is so immensely broad, how am I supposed to know what you consider good science and bad science? If we start like this, I'd have to ask for your approval every time I want to use a computer."

"Those have gotten rather disturbing over the years..."

"For the last time, computers aren't evil, you're just shit at dealing with them. No." He quickly holds up a hand to put an end to that particular topic. "Best not get into that again. It makes both of us very unhappy."

His beeper interrupts the conversation yet again and Gaster fishes it out of his pocket indignantly, but there is no time to read it. A sudden bang echoes through the halls from a distance, still loud enough to make everyone jump and look around in alarm.

"What was that?" Pollard has the time to yell, right before the entire room begins shaking. Gaster almost drops his pager and knocks a rack of test tubes off the counter in his search for balance, Grynn and Pollard fall backwards and hit their backs against the wall, while Freeda flails her short arms wildly before dropping to her knees. Asgore simply hunches down even more, bending his knees and leaning his upper body protectively over the child in his arms. The equipment on the tables rattles loudly, beakers and bottles drop to the floor and shatter, a rain of plaster trickles down the walls and from the ceiling.

It only lasts a short moment, but as soon as it is over, all the lights switch over to the red blinking emergency lighting and a loud, blaring alarm starts howling through the building. Every single pager in the room begins beeping frantically, their owners scrambling from all kinds of compromising positions to try and reach them. Freeda gets to hers first. "C3 coolant system is down," she announces with a tight voice, still sitting on the floor where she fell down and now hastily climbing back to her feet. "There was a minor explosion in generator room 21-C3."

"Emergency generator online," Gaster quickly jumps in, clicking through his own, more detailed distress call and already briskly walking towards the door, only losing his balance slightly from the aftershocks still shaking the floor. "Reactor 3 is approaching meltdown."

"Oh my God," Pollard wheezes, pushes himself off the wall and staggers to the exit with surprising speed. He lunges at the keypad, only for Gaster to snatch him back by his collar.

"Dr. Pollard, hold your position!" he hisses angrily, pushing him behind him. "No rushing off on your own, you'll just manage to make things even more broken."

"The housing complex is next to C3!" Pollard yells back, shaking in fear and panic and fruitlessly trying to escape Gaster's grip. "My family's in there!"

"They'll have ordered an emergency evacuation already," Grynn says, a hand pressed to her chest and breathing heavily. With the other she now grabs onto Pollard's wildly swinging arm and holds onto it. "Calm the fuck down! We need to evacuate, too."

"And let the reactor go down, Dr. Grynn?" Gaster snorts derisively, forced to raise his voice as the alarm grows shrill and piercing. "Great idea. Won't have any repercussions whatsoever, I'm certain. Who needs the Core, anyway? Just let it blow itself up!"

"What do we do, Dings?" Asgore asks with a surprisingly calm voice, straightening up again and shifting Sans around in his arms, until his head is lying on the king's shoulder and Asgore's hands are holding onto his legs.

Gaster takes a deep breath. "First of all, you put that thing down. We need to get to C3, either shut down the reactor manually or fix the coolant system. The experiment is less likely to take any damage if we leave it here."

Asgore actually nods and complies without protest, very carefully laying Sans back down on the chair. Gaster types his code into the keypad to release the lock-down, his three subordinates lining up behind him with varying degrees of control over their emotions. Pollard is a sweating, shaking mess already, while Grynn tries hard to remain calm but has some obvious trouble breathing. Freeda's hands are twitching and even though her expression remains stoic, her eyes are darting around in their sockets as she calculates the possibilities of multiple outcomes to the situation.

When the doors slide open, the little family of three is still standing on the other side, jumping back in surprise. The father is holding onto Alphys in his arms again and both the parents immediately begin bombarding Gaster with questions. Freeda is even faster than him in cutting them off. "No time," she snaps at them, grabs them both by their sleeves and pulls them with her back into the lab. "It's relatively safe here, please stay." She jumps out again and slams the door right in her son's scared looking face, typing in her own lock-down code.

Gaster is a tiny bit proud.

But she's right of course, there's no time, so he turns away without a comment and leads the way down the red lit corridor. Asgore is right next to him, a grim and resolute expression on his soft face. His steps are so long that he is constantly on the verge of overtaking Gaster, who is basically running. "Are the workers safe?" the king asks.

"No," Gaster simply says, checking his pager as he runs. He has to grab Asgore's arm and pull him down the right corridor when they pass by the elevators and the king heads right towards them, even though they automatically go out of order when the facility runs on emergency generator power.

The building keeps shaking ominously as they rush down the stairs, a dull hum sounding through the corridors along with the blaring of the sirens. Gaster silently curses the red blinking lights that make it hard to see, causing him to miss a step every once in a while and almost go tumbling down the stairs. He is only held upright by Asgore grabbing his elbow and pulling him back.

It turns into loud cursing the third time that happens. "Who the fuck thought this was a good idea? Yes, brilliant, turn off all the lights and just blink a bit of red every once in a while, that seems appropriate for an emergency. Never mind that you might actually need to _see shit_ in order to _fucking fix shit_!"

"Will you please mind your language!" Asgore growls at him as they finally reach the correct floor.

"I don't mind my language, but I do mind the lighting. Not everyone has 20/20 vision and perfect depth perception, alright!" And he angrily points at his lazy eye, just as their little group stumbles out from the stairwell into the corridor.

They are greeted by absolute chaos. While the upper floors were almost completely deprived of life, a giant mass of workers and scientists is erratically moving through complex C3; it is, after all, the most densely populated floor, what with the cafeteria, break room and housing complex all being situated right here.

The noise level rises dramatically even above the shrill alarm sounds, as most people are yelling at each other, trying to communicate over the noise and only ending up contributing to it, while others are simply screaming or crying and making it all worse. The stream of people pushes away from the reactor, towards the exit that is too far away for anyone to even reach it in time. Just a small number of people remains that still attempts to swim against the current, to fight their way towards the reactor to try and fix things, or maybe to search for colleagues and family that are unaccounted for. A constant banging and clanging echoes all around them, the pipes in the walls and ceiling practically groaning from the strain of passing along cooling water from all over the CORE facility towards the problem area.

Asgore steps in front of them and pushes his massive body into the writhing sea of hysterical workers, trying to open up a path for them with his elbows, but even he is nearly swept away. "Please, everyone, calm down!" he shouts. "Proceed towards the exit in an orderly fashion!"

"Oh yes, please, chat with them a bit more, I'm sure that's gonna work," Gaster yells directly into his ear to even make himself be heard. Behind him, Grynn and Pollard hold onto Freeda's arms, keeping the tiny woman between them and desperately trying to save her from simply being trampled.

Another explosion rips through the air, much closer this time, the sound momentarily tuning out everything else. The shockwave rumbling through the corridor has people stumbling to the ground and against the walls, screaming and panting as they're being squeezed in between their colleagues and the hard concrete. Gaster has to cling with both hands to Asgore's ridiculous cape, and even then he is shoved back against the wall. The wind is knocked right out of him and he gasps for breath, the world going white in front of his eyes for a moment as somebody's elbow is rammed straight into his diaphragm. Only Asgore and Grynn, who are closest to him and had the presence of mind to grasp his arms and hold onto them, keep him from falling over and being swept away by the masses.

He doesn't take the time to entirely catch his breath. As soon as he has a foothold again, he casts out his magic over the sea of souls in front of him, forcing them to move away from him. Catching onto his strategy, Freeda quickly sends out a rain of her bullets, pushing people even further back in their instinctual desire to evade another monster's attacks. When the rumbling and shaking slowly subsides, Gaster and Freeda have carved a path for their group and now hurry up to move along before they lose control over the masses again.

Gaster is clutching his stomach, bending over a bit and breathing heavily while running, and neither Asgore nor Grynn let go of his arms. He would appreciate the gesture, if he wasn't too pissed off right now that he couldn't see whose fucking elbow that was so he can later fire the person it belonged to.

His fingers are clamped tightly around the pager in his pocket.

"What do we do?" Grynn finally asks when they reach the less lively part of the corridor, the part that everyone is running away from, where the droning and creaking and clanking is loud and stifling around them, where the air is humid and a thick with white fog clinging to the tiles. They can hear crackling fires somewhere and smell burning rubber and plastic. "Fix the coolant system or try to shut down the reactor?"

"We have to assess the situation first," Freeda answers, "figure out which of the two would take less time."

"How much do you think we have left?" asks Pollard with his annoyingly wavering voice. "Five minutes? Ten?"

"Depends on the severity of the damage," Gaster grunts, still wheezing a little. "I'd reckon three to five, judging by the fact that we had two explosions already."

"Where did those happen?" Asgore says quietly, inappropriately somber considering how they are running through the facility with pure adrenalin pumping through their bodies. "How many workers would have been close by?"

"Not too many," Gaster tries to reassure him a bit. "The generators overworked themselves trying to make up for the lost coolant pumps. Generator rooms on this side of the complex have only three to four technicians supervising them."

"Three to four," Asgore repeats hoarsely, as if Gaster just gave him a number with triple digits. "Do you think they survived?"

Gaster has absolutely no patience for this right now. "Well, I'm certain if they just closed their eyes and wished real hard, they had absolutely no trouble surviving a generator exploding right in their faces!"

Luckily, the following awkward silence is almost immediately broken when a group of technicians appears farther down the corridor, talking hectically and running to and fro between different rooms. One of them notices the scientists and the king approaching and runs toward them with a relieved yell. "Dr. Gaster, thank God! We're in the process of shutting down Reactor 3, but the SFP still requires cooling and we can't get the system back online." She walks alongside Gaster and passes her tablet over to him, which displays the current readings. "Boiling point was reached at 1106 hours," she continues as Gaster keeps hurrying along, tapping through the data on the tablet. "We'd be able to contain the release of radioactive elements inside the tanks, but the explosion ripped a hole through the wall! The entire section is impossible to seal off now."

Asgore seems to run out of patience as well as he barely lets the technician finish before asking "What does that mean?" in Gaster's direction.

"We have water pools cooling down the spent fuel. The water shields us from radiation, but without the extra coolant system it's heating up. If it boils off, we'll have a massive radiation leak since we can't even put the tanks into lock-down, due to a bloody hole in the wall apparently." He tosses the tablet back to the technician and then stops her short as she intends to keep following him. "Stop your colleagues from shutting down the reactor, right now. I want it powered up again in two minutes tops." She doesn't question him, doesn't even nod before turning around and running back to the other technicians, barking orders at them from afar already. Gaster snaps his fingers at his own subordinates and leads them in another direction, away from the fuel tanks and towards the coolant control room.

"We need the energy produced by Reactor 3," he explains unprompted to his confused followers. "Even if it stays offline, the fuels are still sitting there without cooling, so shutting it down won't solve anything. Fixing the coolant system is our only possibility to save this."

At the end of the corridor, three heavy steel doors lead in three different directions, with the generator room in the middle. Gaster hurries through the door on the left, entering the large octagonal hall that is the control room. In the middle of the hall, sealed off by a thick glass wall, sits the coolant pump; a metallic gray cylinder with a fifteen feet diameter, towering over them with a height of about sixty feet. The monitors and control panels in front of the glass are all powered down.

Pollard hastily walks forward and tries booting them up again, only for a command prompt to open up on the main monitor, spouting seemingly random lines of corrupted code for a few seconds, before blinking a general error message and immediately shutting off again. "What?" he cries dumbfounded, trying again with another panel, only to receive the exact same result. "That's, that's some kind of virus or something! How did we get a virus on these? That's impossible!"

"Obviously it isn't," Gaster says, stepping up next to him and trying to boot up the machines with his personal emergency clearance code. Of course it fails and he breathes out harshly through his nose, walking along the rounded walls to look into the pump room from the side. Grynn and Freeda join in with Pollard's continued and pointless attempts to turn any of the control panels back on and Asgore stands back fearfully, no doubt reinforced in his believe that computers are the work of the devil.

Somewhere behind them, in the room opposite of the control room, a deep hum growing louder and louder signals the restart of Reactor 3. Booting up the system now makes it emit a spray of sparks, before flashing the same code and error message and going offline again. "Shit!" yells Grynn, punching the panel closest to her and then pushing herself off the machine to turn towards Gaster. "We need to power up the pump manually, that's the only thing I can think of."

"It runs on the same system as these," Freeda counters. "Whatever virus is prohibiting our access, it will have that same effect on the direct control panels of the pump."

"With a significant delay though," Gaster says, staring at the part of the pump room that the others cannot see yet. It borders directly on the generator room to the right. The thick metal wall has a giant hole ripped into it and white steam is rolling through it. The opposite wall of the generator room must look just like this, because that steam is coming from the boiling water in the fuel pool right on its other side. "The main program is running directly over these computers and their signals are transferred to the pump software. Launching a command from the pump software directly skips the boot up process and give us a few seconds to negate the virus with the right command line."

"A command line we don't know" Pollard protests. "We'd have to analyze that virus first, that could take hours. We'll have reached complete reactor meltdown by that time!"

"Dings," Asgore begins urgently, "if this is a dead end, tell me now so we can evacuate."

"It's way too late for that. This is the main coolant pump, if we don't get this fixed, we'll lose one reactor after another until the whole facility is down. We could the closing our eyes and wishing trick to magically teleport all the way to Snowdin and we'd still die of radiation poisoning tomorrow when this thing explodes."

Grynn falls back against the wall, clutching her head with both hands and staring ahead. "Oh God, oh my fucking God," she breathes, finally giving into her panic. "What do we do, what do we do?"

Pollard starts frantically booting up one computer after another, typing in any command he knows during the short window of time when the prompt shows up and Freeda stares up at the monitors, obviously trying to memorize the code and take it apart in her head. Somehow, from somewhere, Asgore actually produced a paper bag and makes Grynn breathe into it, rubbing her back and mumbling soothing nonsense at her.

Gaster turns around sharply and looks at the monitors. His pager is in his hand already when it beeps again, informing him that one, the reactor is completely up and running again, and two, the cooling water in the fuel pools is completely burned off and radiation levels are now rising. The control room itself is safe for now, properly sealed off with security glass and air tight doors. The pump room behind the glass however is filling up with billowy steam clouds, ominous envoys of the invisible danger following them.

He straightens his shoulders decisively. "Dr. Pollard, give me your pager."

Luckily, Pollard is desperate enough to lunge at any sign that his boss finally knows what to do, so he doesn't waste any time in following the order he doesn't understand. Gaster holds the little device in his other hand for a moment, still watching the monitors and the code flashing across them, but then he looks down at his hands and programs the command line into Pollard's pager.

"Here," he says, tossing it back to him and then clutching the man's shoulder to turn him around and push him towards the decontamination chamber leading to the pump room. "That should give you full access. Type it in as quickly as you can, you have about thirty seconds."

Now, confusion does take over after all and Pollard looks at him over his shoulder. "How did you ‒?" he starts, before abruptly going silent and stopping in his tracks. "Oh," he says, staring past Gaster at the hole in the wall. "Oh no, Dr. Gaster. I-It's..." Giving up trying to find the words, he simply points at the damage.

Grynn claws her way back up the wall to see and then stands completely still as she slowly processes the meaning of the hole and the clouds. Freeda, too, stops in her tracks, but she is staring at Gaster instead, an unreadable expression in her eyes.

Asgore is confused. "What is it now?" He somehow manages to say this without sounding annoyed, but just genuinely worried.

With a long sigh, Gaster rubs his forehead. "The room is contaminated by now," he explains. "It's the radiation from the fuel pools. But somebody has to go in there and type in the code, there is no way around that."

With a violent jerk, Pollard tries to twist out of his grasp, but Gaster just clamps his hand down harder, digging his fingers into the man's shoulder. Pollard's eyes grow wide, his pupils shrinking down to little pinpricks and he clutches at Gaster's coat with both his hands. "No, no no no," he begs breathlessly, hunching down in front of Gaster and staring up at him frightfully. "Please, oh God, please don't do that, please don't do that to me ‒"

"For all we know, it could just be minor radiation," Gaster says, taking a step forward and pulling Pollard along with him, who trips over his own dragging feet and squirms around like a worm avoiding the fishing hook.

"Gaster, what are you doing!" Asgore yells, finally understanding fully what is happening, running up and stopping next to Gaster to grab hold of his hand, which is in turn holding onto Pollard. "This might kill him!"

"And it might not," Gaster counters, meeting Asgore's eyes resolutely. "It will, however, definitely save all of us."

"Please, please!" Pollard is tearing up now, almost falling to his knees in front of Gaster if it wasn't for his hand holding him up. "I-I have family, you know I have kids, please don't do this to me!"

"Let him go," growls Asgore. "The man has a wife and children!"

"A person's worth is not determined by how many people care about them," Gaster says coldly, "but by how much they are able to contribute to society." Still, he lets go of Pollard's shoulder and lets him fall to the floor, taking a step back and looking down on him. Pollard can barely keep himself upright, one hand pressed to his mouth and silently sobbing, his eyes still widened in horror.

Gaster turns around to face Asgore. "Do you wish to choose?" he asks calmly. "It can't be you or me, considering how important we are for the future of monsterkind. So, your choice then I suppose: Grynn, Pollard or Freeda?"

Asgore actually visibly recoils at hearing those words. He tumbles a step back, looking at Gaster as if seeing him for the first time. In the background, Grynn starts breathing heavily again, shifting ever so slightly towards the exit door. Freeda clasps her hands behind her back and doesn't turn her gaze away from Gaster.

"You might think to choose Freeda," Gaster continues, his tone of voice suggesting nothing but friendly advice. "She is old, after all. Not much time left anyway, so if we shorten it a bit, what does it matter?"

Asgore draws back even more, slowly shaking his head. "Stop."

"Hm?" Gaster tilts his head to the side. "Well, you're right of course, Freeda is still the most efficient lab worker I have, probably the only one of those three here completely deserving of her position. Dr. Grynn, then? No family to speak of there, no form of private attachment at all, as far as I'm aware. That is the currency in which we measure the worth of monster lives around here, is it not?"

"Fuck you," Grynn says quietly.

"Of course," Gaster carries on mercilessly, "she sucks at typing. Never seems to remember she has ten fingers to use. She'd never manage to type the whole line in only thirty seconds."

Asgore is completely avoiding his eyes by now, looking to the side on the floor and helplessly clenching his fists at his side.

Turning around slightly, Gaster looks at Pollard again. He is standing up from the floor at this very moment, knees shaking and whiskers quivering. The pager in his hand almost seems to get crushed in his grasp, but he lifts his head and meets Gaster's eyes.

There is no need to waste five seconds to stare him down. With a wave of his hand, Gaster directs him towards the decontamination chamber. "Get in there, Dr. Pollard." He keeps his voice a bit gentler than normally, but still makes sure to leave no room for arguments. "And don't screw it up."

Half expecting the nervous scientist to slump over and faint, Gaster can't help but be a tiny bit impressed when the man instead straightens his shoulders, breathes in deeply and spins around, his shaking knees hardly noticeable if one didn't already know they were there.

The room is deathly silent while Pollard enters the chamber and they all stand perfectly still, watching through the glass as the door to the control room is automatically sealed. Pollard only hesitates for one tiny second, then he presses the button to open the doors to the pump room. Pager tightly held in his hand, he runs across the metal catwalk to the side of the pump, opening the control panel. He is shaking now, very obviously too, and Gaster is really going to punch him if he mistypes the line now because of that.

While the program fires up, Grynn and Freeda inch closer toward the glass, watching intently. Grynn's fingers are wound around each other in front of her, clenching and unclenching, and Freeda must be calculating things again ‒ most likely the level of radiation in the room and the results of short-term exposure to that level. Gaster doesn't even try, it's all just speculation until they get the actual readings.

Pollard begins typing and his hands stay miraculously calm. The same command prompt from the monitors in the control room is flashing on the little panel behind the metal plating of the pump, but Gaster can even see from back here that its corruption is spreading much slower. Very quickly he glances to the side, but Asgore is just watching Pollard with a look of utter regret and guilt on his face. What else.

It takes less than fifteen seconds. Knowing that every extra minute spent at work might mean an even faster death seems to be a pretty effective motivator, Gaster notes, as Pollard rushes back over to the chamber, trembling from head to toe as he waits for the door to seal itself and the air in the chamber to be cleansed. Gaster isn't looking, he is instead booting up the controls inside the room again, grinning widely when it comes online without any trouble. "Success," he announces, grabbing a chair from nearby and sitting down to direct the reboot of the coolant system.

The door to the chamber springs open behind him and Pollard stumbles back into the room, falling right to his knees and proceeding to puke on the floor. Gaster gives him a quick look over his shoulder, just as the pump comes back online and the alarm finally stops blaring. Pollard is pale like a sheet of paper, sweaty and shaking, his hair clinging to his wet forehead and uncontrolled half-sobs tumbling out his mouth. Gaster waves at Grynn and Freeda. "See to it that he gets to medical. And keep your distance, obviously."

There is a bit of mumbling behind him as he turns back to the control panel. It takes a while for Pollard to get back to his feet without help, but he does manage after a bit and proceeds to shuffle out of the room, Grynn and Freeda walking along carefully and trying to keep their voices gentle as they warn him not to touch anything.

The sounds grow more and more distant, until they disappear completely. Even though Asgore doesn't say a single word and keeps completely still, Gaster can basically hear him judging him behind his back.

"So," he starts without turning around, "did you by chance see what happened here?"

A low, rumbling sigh escapes Asgore throat. "A terribly brave man risked his life to save us all." Heavy steps slowly approach until Gaster can see him standing to next to him out of the corner of his good eye. "But I have a feeling that's not what you saw."

Gaster decidedly keeps his attention on the program running on the monitors, but apart from a slight loss of power from the busted generators, everything runs smoothly again. "Well, I'd petition to at least put a little question mark behind the whole 'brave' thing. But you're right, that's not what I meant. What happened was that you were too much of a coward to make a decision crucial to our survival, so I made it for you without your permission. And now look at us, being all not dead."

After a long, long pause, Asgore sits down next to him, the chair creaking and groaning dangerously under his massive weight. "I still didn't like it," he says with a dull and sad voice.

Gaster snorts a laugh. "Of course not, that's my whole point." Finally he turns around to face him, pointing at the king's chest accusingly as he rants. "You're all soft and mushy on the inside and it keeps you from doing your bloody job, so I'm not apologizing for doing it for you. If I hadn't sent Pollard in there, we'd be dead now. If I hadn't decided to do experiments on an artificially created soul, we'd have no chance left to solve this crisis. The rest of the underground doesn't have alarms blaring and red lights flashing, and maybe that's why the severity of the situation hasn't settled into your fat head yet, but it's no less dire than what just happened in here."

It's a bit like yelling at a child, and while Gaster knows he isn't exactly a nice person, he still doesn't get any kind of satisfaction from something like that. Asgore looks kind of tiny with his hunched shoulders and grieving face, but Gaster knows he isn't done yet. He leans forward in his chair and puts both hands on Asgore's shoulders for good measure.

"Monsters die in your kingdom, Asgore." He speaks slowly and insistently, making sure not one word goes by unheard. "We're sitting here in the CORE and you in your castle, happy that we can barely be touched by the whole thing because I went through the trouble of isolating those places to make them safer. Never mind that this means we pump all of our ME away from here and into the rest of the underground, making it even more dangerous out there. I didn't do that so you could sit on your ass and pretend none of this is happening, I did that so the institutions needed for solving this stay alive and functional."

With an exhausted huff, Asgore rubs his giant hands over his bearded face. "Golly, you just can't take a break, my friend," he says in a dull attempt at good humor. "Don't you want to just take a breather after solving this one crisis? Do you have to go right back to our discussion of another one?"

"Well gosh diddly darn it Asgore, I'm just picking up where we left off." Gaster leans back again, pushes up his glasses and crosses his legs. "We're killing people already for this research. Humans, yes, but let's not pretend we're not both aware those are people, too. So how do you justify allowing that but at the same time drawing a line at experimentations with artificial souls? Which are, you know, not people."

Asgore actually slides down in his chair and groans loudly, his face completely covered by his hands. "Gosh, Dings. On what kind of fuel are you running? You just sent a man you worked with for years to what might well be his early grave! How do you have the energy to go right back to arguing?" He spreads his fingers apart a bit and looks at Gaster somberly through the gaps. "How are you not... _feeling_ anything here?"

With a frown and a huff, Gaster makes a very rude gesture, half expecting Asgore to fall over from the scandal before remembering how bad the king is at speaking in hands. "Don't go down that route again," he says instead. "I'm not going to pretend to have the kind of emotional responses you expect me to have just so you can feel better. I don't have time for nonsense like that." He gives his own chest a quick, meaningful tap. "I probably don't have much time in general."

Asgore immediately sits up again, a level of grief on his face that still manages to catch Gaster off guard every time they talk about this. To stop the onslaught of pity and lament that is sure to come, he quickly raises his hands and shakes his head. "No, I still don't want time off and no, I'm still not depressed, stop treating me like someone who is in touch with his emotions, for fuck's sake. I'm saying that I need an alternative to complete this research, I can't keep taking the risk of experimenting on myself. You won't let me recruit Muffet ‒"

"It's not my place to order her to sell her soul."

"‒ whatever, let me finish, you won't give me Muffet, so I had to find another way to stay alive long enough to safe the world. Hence the artificial soul."

Asgore looks at him for a long time, leaning forward in his chair and hands folded over his knees. Then he shakes his head with a sad smile. "If that was your reasoning for all of this, then why in the world did you not tell me from the start?"

"Are you kidding me?" Gaster says dryly. "You saw the thing. It's small, it has big eyes and a baby face, of course you wouldn't have let me do experiments on it. You adopted the damn human because it looked cute, for fuck's sake."

"Language, please!"

"Fuck language."

Asgore's forehead creases into a small frown. "I'm serious. Don't use such words when talking about my child." Gaster simply rolls his eyes without an answer ‒ there's not much he can say here without sparking an argument ‒ and Asgore shakes his head once more. "You really thought I would forbid you from taking measures that could prolong your life?"

Gaster copies the king's frown and adds a touch of confusion. "You say that as if it's something you've never done, when ‒ you know. Muffet happened."

"That was a very different situation. It was about a living monster, a real soul. As much as I wish for you to live, I can't let you compromise another's safety and free will." He pauses and Gaster is curious enough to let him collect his thoughts in peace. "This ‒ artificial soul," he then begins anew, trying out the word like a new taste. "It cannot feel anything? It cannot think for itself?"

Gaster smiles a tiny smile. "Like I said. Think of ‒ an insect. That's perhaps more apt of a comparison than the stuffed animal thing I said before. It will notice pain, it will react to it. But it lacks the nervous system and the brain functions to actually feel anything about it. And I'm aware you even hate killing insects, but I'm hoping it's a price you'd be willing to pay for another chance at life for me and monsterkind."

A dry chuckle escapes Asgore as he rubs his face again, slowly getting up from his chair with creaking knees. "Well, now even I know you're manipulating me, seeing as one second ago the thought that I might not want to see you die was as alien to you as ‒ as you regretting the possible death of a colleague." He shakes his head once more, staring down at Gaster with that trademark look of sad, pitying resignation in his eyes. Gaster really doesn't like that look.

Then, Asgore drops a heavy hand on his bony shoulder, carefully, as if he's afraid to break something; he even has the audacity to pat him twice before taking it away again. "I will attempt to bring some order back into this chaos. Please give me a detailed report of that experiment at your earliest convenience so I can look it all over in peace. For now, though, you have my tentative allowance to continue as you wish with it."

When he's almost out the door, he turns around once more with a stern expression. "Visit your colleague. No matter what you think of him, he was a hero today."

"Yep," Gaster quietly agrees, when he can't hear Asgore's footsteps anymore and is sure that he's gone. "Because he did what I told him to do."

* * *

He has to stifle his laughter when he returns to Lab 1 about three hours later and is greeted by Freeda's furious family. Admittedly, he completely forgot they were locked in there and he usually doesn't like forgetting things, but this one has too hilarious of a result for him to feel bad about it.

The only damper on his mood is the realization that Sans was still in there with them, too, but it's only a short moment of worry; when the nagging parents finally make room for him to actually enter the lab, he sees that the kid is still out cold, lying on his chair in exactly the same position they left him in. Alphys is sitting next to him and reading to him from a book she brought. At least she's not openly crying anymore, but she does still seem upset. She's also an expert at ignoring her parents as they call for her to come and return home with them.

The mother actually turns to Gaster with a resigned sigh. "That thing," she starts hesitantly. "It's not a normal child, is it? It hasn't done anything this whole time, it's just lying there like a ‒ like a ‒"

"Puppet," the father jumps in. "It's unsettling, but ‒ it's better than what I assumed?"

Gaster crosses his arms and smiles at them slowly. "Well, it seems someone is actually a bit smarter than they look! Well done. Maybe, and here's a novel idea, maybe next time your daughter comes to you with a fantastical story about a child imprisoned by evil scientists, you should consider checking your facts first before running straight to the king of all monsters."

While the parents don't seem happy about the way he's talking to them ‒ and few people ever do, so that's not really a bother ‒ they do also have the decency to look a bit ashamed. The father is rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. "I really thought my mother was experimenting on children," he says, shaking his head at his own stupidity. "We owe her one giant apology. Ah, and you too, of course, Dr. Gaster. We shouldn't have doubted you like that."

"Damn straight. But I'm feeling generous today, so you're forgiven. Concerning your daughter, if you would still want her to be involved in this experiment, which is not in any way harmful for her and actually very educational, we can talk about the details some time next week. You know, when things have calmed down a bit in here and we can be sure there are no more explosions. Well. Unscheduled ones."

After finally ushering the little family outside and receiving quite the stink eye from the little girl, Gaster hurries to check Sans' vitals. They're all stable, but he didn't expect the sedative to still be quite this potent after such a long time, so he gives him a breathing mask and puts the machines on alert if anything changes, just as a precaution.

He sinks into a chair next to him when he's done with that, taking just a short moment to concentrate on just breathing. His diaphragm still stings a bit and he rubs a hand over it, reaching into his pocket with the other and pulling out his pager again.

As he's clicking through the programs he installed on the thing, he at first doesn't notice the shuffling steps outside the door. When the doors slide open though, he quickly drops the little device back into his pocket and looks up with a not even entirely fake tired expression.

He raises his eyebrows in honest surprise. "Dr. Pollard," he greets the man standing in the doorway, holding onto the frame insecurely with one arm slung protectively over his own stomach. He seems queasy, but otherwise unharmed for the moment. "Not dead, I see. Nice of you to drop in, we have a lot of cleaning up to do in here." And he gestures at the broken glass covering the floor all over the lab.

Pollard stands still, thinking, and Gaster can't help but be intrigued. He leans his elbow on the armrest and watches him.

When he has enough of the silent staring contest, Pollard reaches into his pocket and pulls out his own pager, the one that Gaster saved the command line to that ended up saving the day. He turns it over in his hand nervously. "How did you know this?" he asks, holding up the beeper questioningly and swallowing thickly. "Th-there's ‒ there's no way you made that up on the spot, it's way too complicated. Not even you are that smart."

Gaster taps his fingers on his knee. "In my experience, that's just something stupid people say when they are confronted with actual genius. Keeps them from having to examine the illusions they built for themselves about their own intelligence."

Pollard stops turning the pager around, closes his fist around it and holds it up. He actually looks angry. "That's why you chose me, then," he says accusingly. "Because you think I'm the least intelligent. Because you thought I was the least likely to notice that something was off." He pushes himself off the frame, his clenched fists disappearing into his pockets, and he stares Gaster down. For five seconds.

Gaster has to fight hard to keep the grin off his face.

"What do you think, Dr. Gaster?" Pollard begins coldly. "How did a virus get into the CORE facility systems? The systems that are protected by codes you personally wrote? I wonder if taking a look at your pager would help solve that particular mystery."

It's a lost battle at this point. A wide, teeth baring grin stretches across Gaster's face. "Watch it, Dr. Pollard," he says lightly. "It seems you have a random backbone growing there." He can see the exact moment that his own grin grows diabolical; it's when Pollard has to visibly shake out his shoulders to get rid of the shudder creeping up his spine. "We wouldn't want you confused over what to do with that, would we?"

Still, Pollard straightens his shoulders immediately, his eyes sparking with hatred. "Don't worry, Sir," he says. "I won't be." And with that, he turns around and walks away.

Gaster blows a shrill whistle after him and breaks into a slow clap. "Holy shit, a one-liner! And he's walking off dramatically like a pro, too. I'm a proud papa right now." Somewhere down the corridor, he can hear Pollard slam a door.

Still chuckling quietly to himself, he drops his pager to the floor and encases it in a cloud of orange magic, ripping the still object to shreds until it's a puddle of molten plastic.


	7. Bones and Dust

**Bones and Dust**

The first time Sans summons one of his bullets, Freeda actually falls over in shock. Luckily, she is barely taller than him so she doesn't fall too far until she hits the floor; he doesn't want to hurt her, after all.

Before they start, she spends a lot of time explaining to him what to do, how this particular magic works and how much he'll have to concentrate. Even while she is talking, Sans' magic is already stirring in his chest, pressing expectantly on the borders of his soul, pounding against it and demanding to be let out. It makes his mouth taste like acid and the little monitor he is connected to starts beeping to tell everyone he is leaking magic.

As soon as she is finished talking and takes a small step back to let him try, the blue liquid begins swirling in his soul and he hardly even has to tap into it with his thoughts before it shoots invisibly out into the world and makes a white, rotating bullet form in the air between them. He has just about enough time to see that it's a long, staff-like form with little knobs on both ends, before it shoots off into the lab, spinning around itself wildly, knocking tools and bottles off the tables and making papers dance in the wind.

Sans looks after it, feeling like he wants to laugh but knowing that he probably shouldn't. Even though the magic leaving his soul actually hurts quite a lot and makes the monitors go wild, it also feels kind of ‒ exhilarating. Like he just put something into the world that's solely and uniquely _his_. It makes him strangely proud.

"That's enough," Freeda almost yells, hands held protectively over her head as she steps to the side to avoid a bottle being catapulted off the table in her direction. It shatters next to her on the ground and she gives it a kind of exhausted look. "We should start stocking this lab with plastic equipment," she mumbles.

Sans catches his bullet with his thoughts and makes it disappear again, then looks around at the shards of broken glass and nods sagely. "Plastic better," he agrees. "No breaking."

"What did we say about speaking in whole sentences, Sans?"

Sans breathes out hard in an exasperated sigh, rolling his eyes towards the ceiling. Freeda very lightly flicks the side of his head. "No pouting."

Tilting his head to the side, Sans grins and points at her. "Speak in full sentences," he says slowly and then crosses his arms over his chest, grinning up at her.

Freeda crosses her arms as well and raises her chin to look down on him. "Since I already know how to speak properly, I am indeed allowed to employ the occasional ellipsis in my speech, especially so if it is a colloquially known and used one. You, however, still speak in grammatically incorrect two-word-phrases. If you insist on communicating that way, go ahead. Of course, this will only cause people to think you are stupid. Are you stupid, Sans?"

He feels like she asks that question simply to provoke him, but Sans actually has to stop and think about it for a bit. It's very obvious that everyone else he ever met is a lot smarter than him. He always needs people to explain the simplest stuff to him, surely that means he isn't very smart? But then why would she ask that in a way that obviously wants him to answer in the negative?

Shrugging is the best answer he can come up with, and since they're discussing his inadequate speech patterns, he also adds "I don't know" for good measure.

For a few seconds, Freeda looks at him in contemplation ‒ or maybe boredom, it's hard to tell with her eyes hidden behind the reflecting lenses of her glasses. Then she turns away to look at the destruction of the lab again, dropping the issue as she does when the conversation goes places she doesn't like or care much about.

"Your bullets are bones, apparently," she says, quickly going back to the topic at hand. "That's unusual, but in hindsight not completely unexpected from you."

"Why?" That is one of the very few one-word-phrases Sans is allowed to say and it has quickly become his favorite question. It doesn't only make people explain things to him, it also annoys them when he asks it a few times in a row. It works best on Grynn, since she has already been pretty angry all the time these last two months ‒ ever since Sans was put to sleep and things were all different when he woke up again. But it prompts her to talk to him at least.

Freeda is a little more resilient about the 'why-barrage,' as Gaster calls it, but she too shoots him a quick, warning look before she answers. "The form and behaviour of your bullets represent important parts of your soul. Many scientists for example have simple but effective geometrical forms, like triangles in my case or Grynn with her diamond shapes. The way mine move is focused on efficiency, while hers also produce aesthetic patterns. It's a reflection of our personalities."

"Gaster has cubes," Sans supplies helpfully, but Freeda scoffs quietly and shakes her head. "That's only when he isn't really trying to hurt someone," she says. "When he's actually in a fight, his bullets are tesseracts."

"Yeah, how conceited can you get," Grynn suddenly comments, the doors sliding shut behind her as she enters the lab. She walks over to the little bureau to the left, not even sparing a glance in their direction, and begins looking through folders with her nowadays usual air of anger and haste about her.

"You are supposed to be in a meeting," Freeda says in lieu of a greeting.

Grynn sets down two thick folders with so much force it rattles the entire desk and rolls her shoulders impatiently as she snaps an answer. "That's what I thought, but apparently that one is actually scheduled for tomorrow and while I was running around the place trying to figure out where we were having the imaginary meeting, I missed two teaching conferences at the university!"

"It's almost like Gaster's job is actually demanding," is Freeda's dry reply.

Grynn laughs loudly and without humor. "There is no way he actually attends all of these. He's gotta have a secret system in place or something." She waves a piece of paper with a complicated chart printed on it through the air. "Look at this, there are three meetings scheduled for tomorrow, two of which start at the same time! The third is five minutes after the second one ends but is, for some crazy reason, held in Snowdin Townhall, so it's simply impossible to get there in time. This is so freaking stupid, I don't even ‒" She stops ranting for a second when she turns the paper around to look at it more closely again. Sans tries unsuccessfully to hide behind Freeda's back, but she steps to the side and Grynn looks at him angrily. "Sans, did you draw a fucking dog on this?"

He twists his fingers around each other nervously, but tries very hard to answer with a good sentence. "Not a fucking dog, a white dog."

A weird, high-pitched little sound escapes Grynn at that, like an odd mixture of involuntary amusement and desperation. She presses a hand to her forehead and shakes her head. "What is it with you and dogs. You've never even seen one."

Sans can't help but gasp a little at the implication of that and he grabs Freeda's sleeve, tugging urgently on it. "Dogs are real?!" Both Freeda and Grynn look at him as if he's a bit insane, but he just keeps excitedly watching them for an answer and bouncing in place.

"Of course dogs are real, what did you think?" Grynn finally answers and now it's Sans' turn to make a high-pitched little sound. But Freeda quickly puts up a hand before he can even ask anything. "You are not getting a dog," she says, a very final tone in her voice.

Sans slumps a little in defeat, though he's still giddy about the concept of dogs being actual, real animals. They were always just pictures to him, fantasies like all the other images of houses and plants and all that. He knows the world doesn't really look like that after all, it's all white tiles and green light, so he thought the dogs were just another one of these made up things. "Where?" he asks, tugging harder at Freeda's sleeve until she pries his hand off of it. "Where are the dogs? Where can I pet the dogs?"

"There are no dogs here, they're not allowed in the labs. Desist from whining about it, please."

"Oh God, he'll just draw even more dogs now," Grynn mumbles. With a scoff, she goes back to digging through folders and papers. "Really got other problems right now," she angrily mutters to herself, then she turns around and asks with a raised voice, "When the hell is Gaster coming back to do this shit? That stupid investigation must be almost over by now, right?"

Freeda clicks her tongue in disapproval and even though it's not directed at Sans, he still lowers his head and makes himself a bit smaller. Just as a precaution. "This incident could have well led to the destruction of the Core, possibly even the entire Underground. I do believe it is in everyone's best interest to look very closely at what happened and take measures to prevent a similar event in the future."

"It's been two months! How closely can they look at this? It's ridiculous to even get the Royal Guard involved in this when it's a scientific issue that they don't understand anyways. And as a result we're short one Royal Scientist 'cause he has to tag along their bloody investigation and explain every little detail."

One of Freeda's miniature smiles manifests on her face. "I take it you don't wish to inherit his position anymore."

"Ugh. It's more bureaucracy than science right now, at least until this whole thing is finally over and dealt with." She packs a new bunch of folders, leaves her old ones on the desk and starts for the door again. "You're lucky you're still on lab duty."

"Which is more babysitting than science right now," Freeda states with a small shrug. "Nobody is happy with this. Just do your part to get everything back to normal as quickly as possible."

"Yeah, yeah." The sliding doors already opening for her, Grynn turns around again slightly and looks over her shoulder. "Did you hear anything about Pollard, by the way? Couldn't get around to visiting him at all these past three weeks."

"His condition has not improved much," Freeda says and Sans makes sure to pay very close attention. He still doesn't really know why Pollard hasn't been here for two months and it's hard to get anyone to talk about it. "He might return to work if they get him stabilized, though his wife raised some concern over that idea."

"No kidding," Grynn snorts. "She was in Gaster's office the other day, spitting fire about workplace hazards and whatnot. I'm actually pretty sure she is inching on the Royal Guard to keep the investigation going and focus it on Gaster. He's not officially a suspect, as far as I know, but they're questioning him a lot about how his systems could even be compromised in the first place."

Wrinkles form on Freeda's forehead, even more than usual, and her lips become a thin line as she squints her eyes at Grynn with an air of accusation. "You realize that is a bad thing. We need Gaster. You just complained about his absence yourself."

The exasperated "Ugh" from Grynn sounds as if it's a sound she kept bottled up for weeks. Sans knows how that feels. "Yes, because doing his work is annoying. But surely you know that we're way better off with him locked up somewhere!" The smile she normally wears hasn't really shown itself in quite a while, but now it's even more noticeable; Grynn's face is a tense sort of frown that goes far beyond annoyed, with a twitching muscle right next to the corner of her mouth that she sometimes unsuccessfully tries to rub away. "Or do you actually believe he'd have had any qualms about sending either of us in there if Pollard hadn't gone?"

"Enough." Freeda slashes her hand through the air in a quick, cutting gesture, her face like stone. "It's not polite to talk about someone who is listening."

For a moment, Sans looks around in confusion, but Gaster still isn't here. Then he realizes what Freeda means and points towards the ceiling with a smile. "Cameras!"

When he looks down again, Grynn is striding quickly out of the lab and the doors slide shut behind her.

Mumbling to herself, Freeda shakes her head and takes a sharp little breath before raising her head again and meeting Sans' eyes. "So. Bone bullets. What do you think that says about yourself?"

Training with Freeda means getting used to just concentrating on work, even if there are more interesting things happening outside of it. She has been leading the experiments on him for the past two months now, except for the very short breaks in between when Gaster finds the time to come in and "get a quick fix of actual science before I have to smile at idiots again and fantasize about bashing their heads in with a quantum physics book," as he says it. So even though Sans has questions ‒ so many questions! ‒ he doesn't protest about the abrupt switch back to their previous topic.

His frustration is becoming a little harder to rein in, though. He also knows by now that he doesn't really get punished anymore for not knowing an answer and his main motivation for sufficiently fulfilling all tasks is more about making the creators happy. Since they're all kind of caught up in their own things and don't care that much about his progress right now, nothing he does manages to make them happy anymore, so why should he even try?

Therefore his answer is just a shrug and a "Don't know."

Freeda looks at him and thinks. Before she speaks, she shifts slightly in place and then straightens her shoulders. "Well," she starts, "obviously it means you are a bonehead."

At first, Sans is just surprised that she actually insulted him and he smiles out of reflex, like every other time that a creator says something not work related to him and it makes him feel a bit more important and real. But he also wonders about the context, about why she said 'obviously' and why that's an answer to him using bone attacks. She kind of made it sound like it was more than a real explanation ‒ or less, actually.

It leads to a bit of an awkward silence while he's puzzling over her choice of words. Freeda is the one to break it with a small sigh. "It's a pun," she says, shrugging ever so slightly. "It's supposed to be humorous." She starts for a moment after saying that and looks to the ceiling, muttering "Humerus. That was not on purpose."

Sans is waving his fingers, forming the signs for 'bone' and 'head' curiously, as he's fairly certain it's something about those particular words. The bone part, specifically. He doesn't quite get what's funny about it, but the word means something else in the different contexts; a literal bone in the first case, a more metaphorical one in the second, maybe? Though he isn't entirely sure what a 'bonehead' is, exactly.

Freeda taps his forehead lightly to pull him out of his thoughts. "It's not important, Sans, forget I said anything. You have bone attacks because your soul was created with human blueprints. Bones are a very human thing to have, their bodies are not made of magic after all, so they need a skeleton to keep themselves together. Few monsters have bones in the first place and even if they do, it's just bits and pieces, never a full skeleton."

Sans rubs his wrists, where he can feel the edges of bones underneath his skin. They are slowly becoming less noticeable ever since he completely switched from the nutrition drips to real food. It's still an odd feeling to eat things. Alphys sometimes talks about food and its taste as if it's a good thing, but the white pastes that he has to eat don't even have a taste, they're just bland and boring stuff that comes out of sealed plastic bags in the fridge. They call it astronaut food and eating it is one of his least favorite chores.

"Now," Freeda interrupts his musings, "try that attack again ‒ without destroying anything this time. Just keep it steady and if you lose control over it, make it disappear immediately, understood?"

Snapping out of his thoughts, Sans calls onto his magic one more time, ignoring all the questions in his head that keep going unanswered and concentrates on training again.

* * *

When Pollard walks into the lab after two and a half months of absence, Sans is strapped into the chair where they do experiments on his soul. Even though he knows he's supposed to sit still, he starts moving around a bit, leaning forward and wiggling his fingers in as much of a wave as he can manage. "Pollard!" he calls with a grin and it directs Grynn's and Freeda's attention towards their colleague as well.

He looks different. He has way less hair than before and the few strands that are still there are thin and see-through, just a soft looking layer of matte, downy hair between his droopy ears, and his whiskers are gone completely. It must be something that monsters do every once in a while, changing their hair ‒ Sans got his entire head shaved, after all. But in Pollard's case it just doesn't look as impressive as his thick, orange curls did before.

Grynn and Freeda leave the experiment be for a moment to stand up and greet him. "Hey, you're looking better," Grynn says, finally a bit less angry than all these past weeks. Sans shakes his head with a grin. "Liar, liar!" he chants, happy that they're back to their game of telling obvious lies and annoying each other with it.

Or maybe not. Grynn looks at him with death in her eyes and Sans shrinks back into his chair. Seems like they're not actually playing, then. It was a lie though, a very bad one, because Pollard looks terrible without the hair and with all the wrong colors. His face is too white, the skin around his eyes too dark, the large bruises on his scalp, his neck and all the other parts of his body not covered with clothing or bandages are too red and blistery.

"Don't listen to the kid, you're doing way better," Grynn quietly reassures him, but Pollard shakes his head with a tired smile and glances at Sans. "Not really," he says with a shrug. "Whatever. I've had nothing to do for, well, forever it feels like, so I drew up a few ideas." He lifts up a thin briefcase he carries at his side and pulls out a handful of papers. "I figured Gaster would be busy, so if you want to take a look at this?"

Freeda is the one he hands the papers off to, apparently he knows she's in charge of the project now. Grynn seems conflicted, looking back and forth between Pollard, the papers and the clock on the wall, obviously she's supposed to be on the go already. With her free hand, Freeda gives her a tiny push. "Go to your meeting. We can survive for a few hours without you."

"Alright," she mutters in response, then takes a second to smile at Pollard and softly put a hand on his shoulder. "Don't overwork yourself, yeah? Good to have you back."

Pollard watches her as she leaves and turns back to Freeda the moment the doors are shut again. "I think Grynn being nice to me is the single most disturbing thing that came from all this," he says dryly, his voice hoarse and scratchy until he begins to cough it off as inconspicuously as he can. Which is not very inconspicuous at all.

Quickly and efficiently flicking through the papers, Freeda graciously ignores his hacking. It seems like she wants to answer, but then she gets distracted by the content of the papers, slows down in her shuffling and pushes up her glasses as she begins to read more carefully. "I see where you are going with this," she says, wandering back over to Sans and sitting down on a chair next to him. Sans strains his neck trying to see what Pollard wrote, but he doesn't stand a chance from this angle. "Very risky. You know I can't authorize procedures like this without Gaster's approval, so why come to me with this?"

Pollard is still trying to catch his breath, a white handkerchief pressed to his mouth, and when he finally calms down and stashes it away again, Sans sees a few grains of dust clinging to it. The creator ignores his inquiring stare and just joins Freeda, leaning next to her against a desk. "I'm not trying to get this approved right away, just looking for a second opinion for now. Also, you're the one who's best informed about the state of the project's soul at the moment."

When he looks at Sans, his eyes go right past his face and settle on the soul shining lightly through the hole in the shirt. It's back to how he looked at him right in the beginning, when Sans was still SA-N5 to everyone. That look makes him stop trying to read the paper, stop trying to move around in his chair or establish eye contact with Pollard; he feels small again. He remembers all the pain again. He must have done something very wrong without realizing it, so the best thing to do now is to be quiet, to be still and to only do what he's told.

Freeda is not looking at him either, she's busy reading Pollard's idea. It must be a good one for her to concentrate on it so intently. "There are some parameters we can adjust to reduce the risk," she muses and Pollard nods eagerly, pointing over her shoulder to the section she's reading right now. "Yes, exactly, this in particular is the part where I skimmed over the details. Those are best left up to you, I was really just developing the general idea on a purely theoretical basis. Putting it into practice would require a lot of tweaking and that's more up your alley anyways. But it's possible, right?"

"Definitely. I believe the greatest difficulty would be in finding an appropriate method of testing the procedure. We don't exactly have an abundance of resources."

"That, and I figure royal approval might also be a problem," Pollard adds.

As Freeda is nodding in agreement, her pager sounds from her pocket and she abandons the discussion to check it. "Ah," she makes, looking up at Pollard. "Gaster is on his way, so if you'd like to avoid him..."

At first, Pollard looks like he would love nothing more than running out of the room and never coming back, but with a sharp breath he immediately gets himself under control. "Might as well get this over with," he says with a humorless chuckle, just as the doors already fly open and Gaster struts in.

"General question," he shouts, barely even through the door, "how long is the prison sentence for forcing a grenade down the Head of the Royal Guard's throat? And on a completely unrelated note, who moved the stock of grenades out of my office?"

"That would have been me," Freeda answers. "I thought it might reflect badly on you if the Guard found them."

Gaster stops in his tracks and points at her threateningly. "I expect those back." Then he turns to Pollard, meeting his glare with a confused frown. "Dr. Pollard. Didn't you die?"

With a barely suppressed sigh, Freeda turns away while Pollard's glare intensifies tenfold. "Sorry to disappoint you," he snarls angrily, "but that's a favor I don't plan on doing you anytime soon."

"I'm pretty sure I got a notice," Gaster says more to himself, completely ignoring the aura of indignation pulsing around Pollard. "Who was that about then?" He thinks for a bit and then shrugs, continuing his way into the lab and to Sans' side to check the monitors. "Well, Dr. Pollard, if you're not dead and you're here right now, can I assume you're done slacking off?"

"Slacking off?!" Pollard looks just about ready to start a fist fight, but Freeda puts a hand on his elbow and throws him a warning glance. With a lot of effort, Pollard manages to calm himself down while Gaster leans back in a chair, legs crossed, fingers folded at his chin and grinning at his subordinate.

The creator is sat close enough that Sans can stretch his hand out and just about manages to catch the hem of Gaster's sleeve between his fingertips. He doesn't dare do much more than a tiny tug, but it does get Gaster's attention, who looks at him without turning his head. Sans tries a small smile, but everything is weirdly tense right now and he isn't sure at all about what's going on anymore, so it doesn't turn out very well.

Gaster sighs and mumbles something into his folded hands, then pries Sans' fingers off his sleeve and stands up. He still isn't directly looking at him, but he does take a second to pat Sans' head, probably meaning for it to be reassuring, but only managing to make it slightly dismissive. "My question is, Dr. Pollard," he then continues, "are you actually back at work or did you just come here to collect pitying glances? Because I'd have to disappoint you there, I left all of those in my other pants."

Sans is happy about any word or sentence he understands right now, so he latches onto that last one, makes a proud little noise and lifts one leg as far as he can, but before he can properly show off the new pair of blue pants Alphys brought him, Gaster puts up a hand in his direction. "Yes Sans, those are still just as nice as the first fifty times you showed me. Now do me a favor and just ‒ I don't know, think about math for a bit? Here," He grabs a random piece of paper from the desk on his right and scribbles something down, handing it off to Sans and removing the restraints on his wrists so he can write. "Try solving those. You already learned about logarithm functions, right? Of course you did, those are easy. That's what kids learn in kindergarten, right?"

Staring at the paper, Sans twirls the pen in his hand and thinks hard about his last few lessons. He did see stuff like this already, he was sitting with Alphys while Freeda taught her more advanced things that she thought were too difficult for Sans. Even though he is supposed to work on his own assignments during her lessons, he still listens in a bit when he finishes early, so he thinks he has a chance of solving these. It'll probably be easier if he first writes them as exponential functions...

Gaster claps his hands once and then rubs the palms together. Pollard is standing with his arms crossed and the very moment Gaster takes his attention off Sans, he begins talking in a forcedly professional sounding voice. "While I am officially still on sick leave, I came by to present an idea on how to proceed with the project. If you would ‒" Gaster interrupts him by snapping his fingers at him erratically. "Yeah yeah, just gimme." Freeda is the one handing him the papers and he snatches them out of her grip almost aggressively, turning away to pace the length of the lab while reading.

As he walks and mutters to himself, he brings the pages in his hand into a new order, sorting them by usefulness it seems and occasionally crumpling up an entire page and throwing it over his shoulder. Pollard stands to the side, watching, a muscle under his eye silently twitching.

"This is alright," Gaster finally says, just a small note of surprise in his tone. "Except for the parts that are, y'know, crap. But we can work around that. Huh, maybe I should expose all my subordinates to a bit of radiation, seems to actually increase productivity."

Freeda rubs her forehead. "You did not just say that."

Ignoring her, Gaster points at Pollard with a big smile. "And that still holds up considering that you've just been twiddling your thumbs for ten weeks! Which should really tell you something about your usual performance in this lab."

Pollard's eyes are almost sparking lightning by this point, but he still pretends to be very calm. "You know Sir, instead of insulting me for needing time off _due to radiation poisoning_ , you could just get on with the work. And maybe stop being put out about me coming up with an idea when you didn't."

With a loud guffaw of laughter, Gaster lets himself fall onto the nearest office chair as if the words knocked him right off his feet. "Pollard, you're a fucking delight now that you have balls! Why didn't you grow them sooner? We could have had so much fun. Also, on a side note, coming up with ideas is part of _your job_. I'm not giving you a gold star because you finally figured out how to meet the absolute minimal requirement of _your job_." He begins lazily spinning around in his chair, reading over the rest of the papers, but the smile on his face very obviously suggests he already knows exactly what to do.

Sans solved all the equations for R and read them over, but without a sheet with solutions he can't be sure. This was pretty hard. He lays the paper on his knees, knowing that he shouldn't interrupt right now, and watches as Gaster claps his hands, like he always does when he made a decision, and gets up from his seat. "We're starting right now," he announces to the surprised faces of his assistants. "You guys prep him, I'll have a chat with Asgore and get us some raw materials. Back in five hours tops."

"Wing Ding!" Freeda steps forward a bit, almost blocking Gaster's way out of the lab. "We need to do test runs first, eliminate as many risks as we can. I cannot approve this for practical application as it is."

"Oh, will you stop with your reason and responsibility, it's getting in the way of my work." Gaster shoves her to the side lightly, even though there is more than enough space for him to just walk past her. He turns to look at her as he proceeds towards the exit, ending up walking backwards with a wide grin. "Honestly, do you actually believe I've never done this kind of experiment before? This is just a new application of an old concept, I know how to make it work. And Asgore's eating out of my hand right now after I saved this entire facility and gave him a bit of a reality check, so I can make this even better." He grasps the door frame and waves a hand in Pollard's direction. "Even at your best, you clowns are always stuck in your little box. So excuse me while I go take a step outside of it." And with a little twirl and dramatically flowing coat tails, he spins out of the door and waltzes away.

Sans looks after him with a frown. "Are we in a box?" he asks no one in particular. Pollard and Freeda don't pay him any attention and just pick up the papers Gaster left scattered everywhere, nervously talking science between themselves that Sans can't understand.

He tucks the sheet with his equations away for later, when he can get some confirmation on whether he did it right.

* * *

Sans never really got the whole concept of 'monsterkind.' It's a word that Gaster uses often. It sounds big, important. It's what he almost broke his own soul for and it's what he's hurting Sans' soul for. But in Sans' head it's still just a word, something that is important to Gaster and therefore has to be important to Sans.

That changes a bit today. A lot, actually. And Sans doesn't like it.

It seems Sans wasn't the only one confused about what Gaster left to do, what kind of 'raw materials' he was talking about. Freeda and Pollard wonder about it while strapping Sans back into his chair, stinging him with needles and connecting cables to him. They talk to Grynn about it when she comes back and all three of them worry together. And then Gaster returns, it all gets very loud and angry and Sans can't even press his hands over his ears to block them out, so he closes his eyes and thinks about math.

That doesn't work for long. While the discussion around him ebbs up and down and very slowly becomes less about ethics and more about experimental methods, Sans reluctantly opens his eyes and looks at the raw materials Gaster wheeled in.

Three operating tables are standing in a row, a monster lying on each of them. Sans concentrates on the one closest to him, a woman, he thinks, but it's hard to tell. Half of her face is missing. There are thick, wet bandages plastered all over her body, covered in dust. Her right cheek looks like something just took a bite out of it, leaving a gaping hole. Sans can see her teeth where the skin and flesh is completely stripped away to reveal the jaw underneath. On the other side of her head is a deep dent, one that makes Sans' head hurt just by looking at it. His stomach clenches painfully with every detail he takes in; how there is just a tight ball of bandages instead of her right eye, how her left arm and leg are just stumps. He can see the grains of dust collecting underneath her and on her chest, can see them move ever so slightly as the piles slowly grow.

He can see her become less and less right in front of his eyes.

Staring at her makes his eyes prickle hotly in the corners, makes his throat clench up almost painfully, but he can't bring himself to look away. He's never seen anything like this, but it's something nobody has to explain to him for once. She's a monster and she's dying. He feels dizzy, far away from his own body somehow. There's a cold tingling everywhere, up and down his spine, in his arms and legs ‒ especially the right ones.

A snapping finger in front of his face brings him back. "Hey, don't space out on me, buddy." Gaster pulled up a chair and is sitting right in front of him, leaning forward with both elbows propped up on his knees and his hands now dangling down between his legs. He grins at Sans, full of excitement. "We're finally getting started here," he says intently, almost whispering to him. "And I mean really started, no more fooling around." He shifts to the side, slinging an arm over Sans' shoulders and shaking him a bit, turning so they're both looking directly at the dying monster. "She's fallen down. A generator exploded in her face, or so I heard, and luckily for us, she didn't immediately die. Now she's just drifting about, taking up space until she's really dead. We can use that."

"It looks a bit scary," Grynn says from behind him, surprisingly softly. "But she's not really alive anymore, so she isn't suffering."

"Do you remember what we talked about, Sans?" Gaster barrels on. "About the goal of all this?"

Sans tries to concentrate on the arm around his shoulders. It makes him feel warm and safe, almost makes him forget about _her_ missing arm. After swallowing a few times, he even finds his voice again. "Give human magic to monsters. Save monsters."

Gaster's arm pulls him towards the creator a bit, growing heavier for just a moment. He feels Gaster's eyes on him. "Exactly," he says, a little more quietly now, a little more calm. "Good boy." Then he pats him on the back and jumps up from his chair, striding over to the operating table and wheeling it closer. Grynn, Freeda and Pollard follow behind him, bringing their needles, their cables, their equipment. "To transfer your special kind of magic to another soul," Gaster says loudly, his hands whirling through the air, "we first need to establish a connection between the two souls. It's a bit unpredictable, as souls are finicky things, but we do have a method worked out already. So, Dr. Pollard," he says loud and accusingly, "we don't need to test it with animal souls first. Those can't even absorb magic, I mean, what the hell is that supposed to accomplish?"

"Oh, I don't know," Pollard snaps, "maybe guarantee of a safe connection?"

"You're not going to get that one way or the other. There are no animal souls similar enough to the parts of the monster soul that we have to work with here, so it'd be impossible to test the key elements of the experiment in the first place. Might as well jump right into it."

The dying monster gets connected to the machines much the same way Sans already is, partly even to the same machines as him. Just as he begins to wonder how they plan on reaching her soul ‒ it's not visible like his, after all ‒ Freeda climbs on a stool next to the table, removes the bandages on her chest and grabs a scalpel.

"Oh" Sans has time to whisper very quietly, then she's already cutting deep into her chest, Grynn joining in to peel the skin back with silvery clamps.

A sour ball of bile rises to the back of Sans' throat, but he swallows it down again with great effort. With his eyes still unwilling to turn away from the display by themselves, he is incredibly relieved when Pollard steps up in front of him, blocking his view. Sans stares up at the creator while he fiddles with some of the tubes and cables, especially the MEC, the magic essence container that they finally fixed up a few weeks ago. Now it's no longer dangling around on a cable and constantly getting in the way, but instead they sewed it underneath his skin. There is a round little bump right under his collarbone now and he has his own version of a pager, one that sends information about his magic essence to the larger monitors in the lab. He has to always carry that with him in his pocket, because he still needs to press the button on it to activate the MEC if he gets a magic overload.

Pollard takes Sans' pager without asking and checks a few things on it, as he probably knows how to interpret the numbers and blinking lights that nobody ever explained to Sans. He presses two of the four buttons on the side, the ones that Sans is never ever allowed to touch, and it makes a small beeping sound come from the device in his chest. Sans curiously looks down on it. "What is that?" he asks, and leans his head forward as far as possible when Pollard doesn't answer, doesn't even appear as if he heard him. "What's the sound?"

Asking more insistently at least makes Pollard glance at him. His eyes are weirdly yellow where they should be white and they seem a bit more watery than usual, even though the creator doesn't appear to be sad. "It's not important," he says. "Just a precaution."

"Why?" Sans tries again, just to keep Pollard in his line of sight for a little while longer. He can still hear the noise of scalpels cutting through skin and he doesn't want to see the details.

Pollard still doesn't really look at him, though. Almost as if he's avoiding eye contact on purpose. Maybe he's mad at Sans for something. Maybe he just regrets the haircut. "You don't need to know any of that," he says, decidedly turning away from him when he is done with his adjustments.

The preparations take a long, long time. Sans watches them cut into the monster's chest, poking at what can only be her soul, even though he can't see it from his position. The longer it goes on, the more numb he gets, almost like part of his mind went to sleep and the other is just tiredly sitting there, taking everything in without caring much about it. It's not completely unwelcome, that feeling. He thinks it's probably much better than getting nauseous and shaky.

Hard to wake up from, though. Gaster has to snap into his face again, much longer and more insistently this time, and only when he also shakes his shoulder a little does Sans finally focus on him again. Though he looks kind of blurry at first.

Gaster is frowning. Uh-oh. Just a little while ago he was so excited, and now Sans ruined that again. "Buddy," he starts, sounding a little exasperated, "I really need you to get it together, here. Your soul will be connected to hers and you have to focus properly to make that work. Alright?"

Sans blinks a few times, wants to rub his eyes but remembers that his hands are tied down. Still he nods, three times in a row and a bit more energized each time. "Yes," he says, trying hard to sound very determined. "I can focus."

"Good!" Gaster claps his shoulder and then waves to Grynn and Pollard. They're standing next to the operating table and now wheel it even closer, right next to Sans' seat.

When he looks at her now, he almost doesn't feel anything anymore, but there are a few more details now that he couldn't see before. The jagged line of the skin around the hole in her face has him looking for quite a few seconds and when he finally manages to turn away from that, he instead gets caught staring at her left eye. It's wide open, glazed over and orange. A nice color. Somehow, even though the way she lies there makes him feel cold, that eye seems warmer than the rest. It stabs right at his soul with a weird, pressing kind of pain that doesn't come from any needles, but solely from his own mind.

Her chest is still pried wide open. There were only two ribs, it seems like, and now they are broken off to make room for all the tubes and cables. Underneath the peeled back skin is white, gooey flesh that slowly evaporates into dust at the corners. The soul is pulled up almost all the way out of her body, delicate black steel clamps surrounding it from all sides and holding it in place. Sans can't help but be a tiny bit fascinated by its color; he only ever saw his own and Gaster's soul, blue and orange respectably, so the white little heart appears unusually pale and weak to him, even though it's likely completely normal.

He tries to ignore that it's barely pulsing anymore and that two thick, sharp needles are shoved into it, so far they almost poke out again on the other side. He can see them through the thin skin of the soul, as it looks almost exactly like Gaster's does at the corners, all see-through, as if made of glass.

Two long, black cables are attached to the needles, not yet connected to anything else but just coiled up in a little heap next to the monster's body. Grynn and Pollard start unfurling them now and they each screw another needle onto the other end.

Gaster has opened the drawer with the equipment specifically for treating souls. Normally Sans starts feeling a little queasy already just looking at it, but it seems he has already used up his reserves of nausea for today, because the sight hardly even does anything.

It still makes him twitch harshly when Gaster doesn't warn him about what he's going to do, just reaches straight for his soul with his gloved hand. His fingers breach the magically grown skin and punch the air out of Sans' lungs, but before he can really start wheezing and gasping for breath, Freeda appears next to his head and presses a heavy breathing mask on his mouth. It doesn't do anything for the pain, but at least he can still breathe. A little.

He needs to remember his training from all the other experiments, especially the early ones. He knows by now how not to scream in pain, even though every fiber of his being is telling him to do so, to lash out and fight or to curl up and hide. Gaster's fingers close around his soul, not tightly at all, but it doesn't matter ‒ the mere contact alone feels like burning and makes the back of his throat taste like blood. When Gaster begins lifting his soul, moving it up slowly and tilting it to gain better access to the underside, lights flare up in front of Sans' eyes, a white hot pain shooting up his spine and right into his skull. Freeda's hands clamp down around his head, holding it in place when he starts thrashing in any way he can, tearing on the cables and almost making the breathing mask slip away.

The injections into his soul haven't been painful for a long while. They put him to sleep once and when he woke up, his soul felt sore and strained and had little metal ports installed into it, much like the ones on his wrists but smaller. Sticking needles into those barely hurts at all, so he doesn't understand why they aren't using them right now. He tries to listen as they talk about the procedure, about what must be done next, but their voices get distorted in his brain, scrambled around until they sound more like the garbled stuttering of machines and don't make any sense at all.

For a short moment, his vision clears enough for him to see Grynn and Pollard standing over him at each side, the black cables with the newly attached needles in hand. Then, he loses focus again, his eyes drifting off to the side and his vision going gray, just before he can feel the needles enter his soul.

A shrill screech tears itself out of his throat, a sound he can barely even hear over the noise of rushing blood in his ears. The restraints cut into his skin as he unwittingly fights against them, his body convulsing violently in his chair without him even really noticing it. Freeda has to hold his shoulders and force them down using all her weight, struggling to keep him still enough for the needles to go where they are supposed to.

Abruptly, everything stops. The pain, the sounds, everything. A cold hand presses against his forehead and as the rest of the world slowly grows darker and darker, Gaster's face appears right in front of him, his empty eyes boring straight into his own and pinning down his mind with heavy force. "Focus on her," he tells him again, almost warningly.

Sans doesn't need the extra incentive. He doesn't have to concentrate at all, his mind gets swept away all by its own and he is plunged into a thick darkness. It's as if all air left his lungs, but he doesn't feel the need to breathe anymore. His eyes feel as if they're open, but he doesn't worry that he can't see. There is a body tied to a chair, held down by familiar hands and writhing in pain, but it's not his anymore. The darkness is vast, is absolute, no shadows or spots of light; it's a darkness in his mind, almost like the gray void, only that his soul is there with him, pulsing quietly in a corner of his consciousness.

It still feels blue, like always, but less intense now. Slowly the color ebbs away, the deep blue growing lighter and lighter, until the little center of his being is suddenly white.

White.

Cracked.

Dying.

As calmly and quietly as the darkness crept up on him, as brutally it now breaks away. With a brittle, cracking noise, he feels a body around his soul again, floating in black nothingness. He doesn't move, doesn't see, doesn't feel, but his mind does. His mind makes him look down, makes him see the arms and legs that weren't his until a moment ago.

Then, searing, burning, fiery pain rips through his side, breaks him apart, shatters the white little soul in his chest that isn't his but at the same time _is_. And his mind makes him watch as his right arm and leg are ripped into pieces.

With a violent howl unlike any sound he ever heard, he snaps back into his own mind, back into his body, shaking and twitching in his chair and cold sweat on his brow. He can't stop the wailing, crying screams tumbling out of his mouth, can't stop the trembling of his arm and leg that makes his muscles feel like ripping, can't make himself remember that the limbs are still there ‒ even as he stares right at them with wet and burning eyes, part of his mind insists on seeing stumps, insists that there is dust piling up below him, trickling from his body and his soul while he's becoming less and less and less, while he's dying.

He's dying. _He is dying!_

"Sans!" Gaster grabs his head, holds it tight, looking at him, but Sans' eyes roll away, spilling tears down his cheeks as he keeps going back to the arm, to the leg, to the stumps, his right eye growing darker with every hoarse and panicked breath he takes. "Calm down, Sans."

Why is nobody helping? Can't they see he's breaking, falling apart, being split into pieces! He doesn't want to die. He doesn't want to die!

Someone rips the mask from his face and a hand falls down instead, pressing his mouth and nose closed. He keeps screaming into it, trying to bite down, trying to fight and run and hide. But the more he screams, the more he remembers that he needs air as he tries to breathe and finds he can't.

It still feels like dying. But this is a kind of dying he's used to. He sobs through the fingers on his mouth, shaking, twitching, trembling, closes his eyes and cries.

"There you go." Gaster's voice is nice again, low, quiet, calm. The hand is pulled away from his mouth and nose and he greedily sucks in a huge gulp of air, breathing out again with a loud, pitiful whimper. "Keep breathing, you're fine."

He doesn't feel fine, doesn't feel fine at all, not even adequate. He has to leave the chair now, he really has to go somewhere else, but breathing is still more important than talking, so all he can do is pull at the restraints, leaning forward and arching his back, trying to get as much distance between his body and the chair as he possibly can.

Gaster's hands push him back down. "Oh stop it, now you're just being difficult," he says, harsh words but gentle voice. It's a familiar juxtaposition by now and with another helpless sob, Sans lets himself fall back again, his skin crawling where it touches the cursed chair. But with a large effort, he forces his muscles to relax, to maybe even stop shaking. "See? Not so bad at all, hm?" Gaster soothes quietly, one hand slowly stroking along Sans' scalp. "That was a good first attempt, kid. You almost got all the way in. Hey." He pokes him in the side a little until Sans opens up his eyes and looks at him. At some point, he got Sans' right wrist out of the bindings and is now holding it up for him to inspect. "Look. Everything's still where it should be. This is your hand, is it?"

The tears spilling out of Sans' eyes haven't stopped yet, but catching his breath is slowly getting easier. He stares at his arm intently, actually taking care to really think about this, to consciously make this his own body again, one that isn't breaking apart. Then, when looking at it finally makes his head hurt a bit less, he nods.

Gaster smiles at him and nods as well. "Of course it is. Because you're fine."

Behind him somewhere, there is a small sigh. "Well, that was dramatic," Grynn says dryly, and Freeda jumps in with "Readings are stable again."

"See, this kind of thing might have been avoided if we had tested this beforehand," Pollard mutters from the left, where he is bent over a monitor and not looking at anyone.

Gaster waves him off with an impatient snort. "Oh, don't act like you had any difficulty watching this. Now," He leans away from Sans again, pulls his hand back and Sans immediately misses the contact, "that actually went much better than expected. Ready for the second round?"

All the forced calm is gone from Sans' mind in an instant. "No!" he yells and rips his arm out of Gaster's grasp as he tries to put the restraints back on. "No, no, no!"

"Sans, for fuck's sake." Gaster is more annoyed than anything, but Sans doesn't care, he goes right back to bucking up in his seat, the panic mixing with a good portion of anger now as he keeps yelling his protest. With joined forces, Gaster and Grynn can catch his flailing arm again and press it down to fasten the bindings around it. Sans sees them reach for the needles, the ones with the black cables attached at the ends, the ones that started all this and that they must have pulled back out of his soul at some point to bring him back to himself.

Any active thought that might have formed in his head stops short at the sight. His magic surges out like a swirling blue storm, blasting away sheets of paper and lab equipment, the four little ~tings almost inaudible over the clanking of plastic, the shattering of glass and Sans' furious screaming. The creators are each smacked face first into the ground and the dull thumping of health points ticking down follows suit as their blue tinged souls are hit by sharp, cracking bones growing out of the floor.

Almost immediately, his own soul turns orange with a pang. Warmth and the unrelenting urge to move shoot through his chest for barely even a millisecond, his one single health point harshly splitting into decimals on the monitors he's still connected to. It doesn't even feel like pain anymore ‒ he _knows_ real pain now, this is just magic. But still it makes him drop his own magic, makes the blue evaporate and forces him to release his hold on the creators.

As soon as his own soul is back to blue, Gaster is on his feet again, his hand shoots forward and his spindly fingers close tightly around Sans' throat, yanking his head forward to have him meet the creator's stormy glare from only inches away. Where his eyes are usually black, bottomless pits, they are now sparking with hot orange, burning with fury while the rest of his face remains devoid of any emotion. His voice is cold and calm and scratchy, like always, but there is still something to it now that makes Sans try to jerk away in fear. "S T O P."

Sans is too exhausted to keep himself from crying again. He stares up at the creator, little hiccups shaking his whole body, clenching and unclenching his fists helplessly. Only after a few seconds does Gaster's grip on his neck soften, the orange in his eyes slowly subsiding. His face doesn't change though, no smile and no frown. "Sans. You made a promise."

The words pierce right through him like a scalpel. Sans feels his eyes widen in shock, before all will to fight suddenly bleeds out of him all at once. He goes slack, falls back, staring ahead towards the wall.

He did. He promised. He promised to never back out of this.

To not waste anyone's time.

To be useful.

Gaster's hand slips away. For one tiny moment, his eyelids flutter shut, a little wrinkle forming just above his nose, and it's somehow the most defeated Sans has ever seen him.

It's like looking at himself.

And then it's gone, back to a smile, a loud clap, a sharp word for the three others that are still fighting to get back to their feet. Sans lies back, too tired to think, too drained to even try. When the needles go back in, his scream remains completely silent, his voice lost somewhere between here and the void.

And he dies all over again.

Her soul becomes his in the darkness, his body becomes hers and he watches his limbs fall apart. When his face begins crumbling away, dust rising up in clouds around him, he grits his teeth and takes a breath and thinks of his promise. The darkness creeps into his right eye, piece by piece it takes his sight away and leaves nothing. He doesn't mind. He likes the darkness better now.

His white-blue soul is the only thing he can see anymore. It's floating in the dark space around him, pulsing quietly, its glow stifled by the deep blackness. The body around it is just an illusion, something he just feels, something that his brain makes him think he can see when really, there is nothing. He's inside his own mind. Of course there is nothing.

Nothing is real, he thinks, as he feels his skull crack and cave in on the left side.

Nothing is real, he thinks, as his soul shrinks back into a small, fragile, weak thing, trickling glowing grains of dust into the absence of air.

Nothing is ever real, he cries into the darkness, as he forgets his name and his mind and his face, takes hers instead and barely remembers ever being anything else before.

She is fallen down. In his mind, he holds her soul in his hands, but they're too tiny, he can't get a good grip and the little heart is falling apart between his fingers. He has to keep catching it, keep watching it as it slips through the cracks again like fog, but he can't stop and let it fall either. For now, at least, just for a moment, he has to keep it up. She has to stay. Her soul trembles in his own as she sobs, she still has so much left to do.

There is a child, a tiny little boy in her mind, and she thinks of the warmth of holding him in her arms. His somehow both strong and weak fingers closing around a single one of hers, just holding on as he sleeps. The smell of that small tuft of hair on his head makes her smile and cry.

She thinks of blue flowers, whispering with bright voices, the sounds dancing through the air until words and laughter become music. Sans is right there with her when she lies back into the grass, closes her eyes and just listens to the song of whispers, some voices she knows and some she doesn't.

He is there with her when she thinks of faces, of hands picking her up when she was smaller, strong shoulders to ride on. A deep voice reading to her, something about it makes her both happy and sad, but mostly happy.

Then, a different kind of hand holding her, an embrace, a closeness, an intimacy of body and mind that he doesn't understand but still kind of does.

He remembers the smells with her together, herbs and strong spices covering the light smell of something burnt. How it makes her think of chuckling laughter, of teasing and prodding, how she tells him so, so fondly that no one in her family knows how to cook.

Family. The word with so many faces drawn to it, so many smells and sounds and tastes, memory over memory. Something sad, something funny, there is anger and then banter, there is affection and then argument. Emotions piled onto emotions, raw and hurting but soft and soothing and under it all ‒

A word she never said, didn't think she had to, she finds it kind of cheesy, kind of sappy, to say it out loud. They know, she sobs with a smile, she didn't have to say it, she laughs. But the small one, she never got to teach him, he doesn't know yet, he can't understand yet, and if she leaves now he might never know. She cries and claws and pulls at anything she can find, but her soul slips through his fingers and his soul slips through hers.

Sans sits with her, falls to his knees with her in the darkness, grasping so desperately at everything that is her, everything that is slowly falling away, and he screams with her in fear and anger, they don't want to die yet, they can't go yet!

Please.

Please don't let me die.

Nothing is real, he thinks, as she dies in his arms thinking of her son.

* * *

Alphys worries.

She does that a lot now, all the time, but she can't really tell him. Someone always sits with them now when she is here, making sure she doesn't say anything wrong. Alphys got angry about that, once, and she yelled a bit about how the creators are lying and how some day, people will believe her when she tells the truth. Freeda just watched her, waited until she was done and went back to teaching her science. Alphys cried a bit that day.

Sans should probably tell her that he's alright. She is a lot more worried than usual today, sitting very close to him and patting his shoulder, asking him and Freeda what's wrong, what they did to him, why isn't he saying anything?

It was a taxing experiment, Freeda explains, everything went well, he is just a bit tired now.

Sans has trouble seeing out of his right eye, there are still some shadows stuck in there and they won't go away. It doesn't bother him all that much, though. He didn't say anything about it. He didn't say anything about anything.

Gaster is very happy about the results, he's still analyzing the data and excitedly planning for the next attempt. Everything went well, Sans managed to connect with the soul, that's the first step before figuring out the rest.

Sans thinks of a pile of dust on an operating table, about family and a tiny child and the word that was never said. He understands now. That is monsterkind. That is what they're trying to save.

He's alright with that. She had been worth saving. Next time, he'll try harder.

"Sans, you're scaring me," Alphys says, her voice is getting wobbly and he doesn't like it when she does that, it means he made her sad or mad and either way it's a bad thing he should never do. So he finally lifts his head off the table a bit, turning around to look at her with a smile. She twitches back in surprise and then hesitantly smiles back.

Sans raises his hand and makes a small bullet show up above his palm, a tiny bone floating in a lazy circle through the air. "I have bone bullets," he tells her, even as she can clearly see that for herself and is looking at his magic in wonder. "Know why?"

Freeda watches very closely and Alphys is trying hard to ignore her. She leans forward, staring at the bone in fascination. "Why?"

Sans' grin widens. "Because I'm a bonehead."

Grynn and Pollard both make the exact same annoyed groan somewhere behind him. Freeda quickly turns away from him and pushes up her glasses, while Alphys squeaks a surprised little giggle. Sans didn't expect a reaction quite like this and looks around curiously. When Alphys is done giggling, she playfully punches his shoulder, seeming very relieved and like she forgot about worrying. Sans should remember this strategy.

Just as everything is back to normal and Freeda wants to continue teaching them science, a loud clanking sounds from the chamber Gaster is working in and everybody looks up in alarm as he kicks the door open and rushes into the lab. "Everybody drop everything!" he yells, his shoulders tensed up and his hands jittery where they throw his new pager back and forth.

"Those were sliding doors," Grynn says with quiet desperation. "You, you just kicked open the sliding doors, that'll take forever to fix ‒"

She abruptly cuts herself off when Gaster trips over his own feet, fumbles for the edge of the table and just barely manages to hold himself upright. His smile flickers on his face, muscles twitching nervously and it's so unlike him that everybody stops and stares.

"They found another one." His voice is even more scratchy than usual and it sounds downright _giddy_. "They found another human."


	8. Patience

**Patience**

So. Penny fell into the monster world.

That happened.

With a little self-deprecating groan that borders on a sob, she crouches down on the floor and presses the heels of her hands over her eyes. She knew it was a bad idea, she knew it! There she was, trying to take some initiative for once, and it went horribly wrong. What a surprise. Maybe next time she'll think twice before sneaking into a crime scene where four children were said to have disappeared already. And about being so preoccupied with avoiding the police officers that she didn't even notice the giant hole in the ground and just fell straight into it.

There was something weird about the hole, it wasn't blocked off or anything, like nobody even knew it was there, even though it was part of a crime scene. Did all the kids fall, she wonders? She doesn't know anything about the first three, they went missing quite a few years ago, but the fourth, Mulazim, is in her class. Was. Whatever. She could picture him tripping and falling though, his nose stuck in his notebook and not paying any attention to where he's going. At least that means he wasn't kidnapped, right? Hopefully she can tell his parents, they are so worried.

Though it does mean he probably fell into a world full of monsters, like Penny. And he hasn't returned.

Breathing out slowly, Penny gets on her feet and tilts her head back, looking up at the ceiling. Way, way up there, she can see the hole she tumbled through, now just a tiny source of sunlight in the distance. How did she even survive that fall? She landed face first on the ground right here and nothing even hurts. She must have fallen at least a hundred feet! Probably much more, but she doesn't want to think about that too closely.

Reluctantly, she turns and looks around the room she landed in. Except for the single spotlight she's standing in, it's completely dark. Black stone, she realizes after staring for a while, so yes, she's at least standing in an actual room, not a dank cave or something. That's a start. It means there's civilization here.

Or was, judging by the numerous cobwebs covering the walls, all the cracks in the black tiles, the piles of dust and dirt collecting in the corners. And, you know, the hole in the ceiling that nobody saw necessary to fix. It seems this place was abandoned a long time ago. Penny feels more like standing in a medieval ruin than in somebody's actual living space.

Well, whatever kept her from getting hurt in the fall, she chooses to believe that it also saved Mulazim. After all, there's no ‒ no bones or body or... yeah, better not think about that.

Very carefully, she steps outside her little ring of light, moving forward in the one direction where she can't see a wall. It's a small corridor, she figures out as she gets closer, and with her eyes slowly adapting to the darkness, she can see an impressive gate just a few steps ahead, with round, black pillars framing the exit.

She should really just stay where she is. Somebody ‒ somebody will come for her, surely.

Even though she didn't tell anyone where she was going.

Even though nobody saw her fall down the hole.

Penny stops right under the gate, presses her hands to her face again and makes sure she _doesn't_ cry. There is no point in wallowing in her own stupidity now; finding Mulazim is more important. Together they can come up with something, find a way out of here and get back home. He disappeared months ago, by now he must have found a good way to stay alive. Because of course he's still alive. And Penny will find him and neither of them will die.

She _doesn't_ cry for just a few more minutes, before sniffling decisively, wiping her eyes and squaring her shoulders. Then she steps through the archway.

* * *

Why did she have to drop her phone? Penny could seriously bite her own nose off for that one. No matter how hard it was to hold onto the thing while free falling over a hundred feet ‒ she could have tried harder. Now her phone is a small pile of rubble somewhere back in that first room. She could have called her mum or the police!

Even though having any reception down here seems counterintuitive, she knows they at least have internet. That had caused quite a huge stir when humans found out about that, her parents told her. The way Penny understood it, there is a kind of extra internet made by monsters that's basically running inside the human internet, but with its own codes and encryptions and stuff like that, so it's really hard to access from the surface. But she knows about the few sites that people managed to make accessible for humans. Mulazim and her read them all together and speculated about what the monsterworld was like.

Though she really hadn't intended to find out like this. Mulazim on the other hand ‒ oh, she is going to throttle him if it turns out he jumped down here on purpose just because he was curious!

The ruins around her are starting to look a bit more friendly. Less deep, depressing black and a lot more purple. Kind of a weird color to see in a ruin like this, she thinks, but it's calming, so she won't complain. It's still dirty and mostly dark, though her eyes are used to it now, so she can slowly and patiently find her way forward. The further she gets, the more often she sees some weird constructions along the way, a collection of stones and switches with old, withered signs on the walls next to them. The text is unreadable and most of the switches are either stuck or don't even do anything, but it definitely feels like there was a very specific purpose to all this at some point. Only when she gets to the pit of spikes rising up from the ground does she realize these things are supposed to keep people like her from proceeding. It's like Indiana Jones!

There is a path through the spikes, though, clearly visible. As she carefully walks along, she thinks how lucky she is that all those puzzles are apparently broken, or she wouldn't have gotten very far.

Just as she starts believing that this whole situation isn't quite as bad as she thought it would be, she can suddenly hear footsteps coming from around the next corner. Her heart starts beating violently in her chest and before she can decide what to do, someone comes around that very corner and looks at her with a start.

Penny gasps loudly in shock and then quickly presses her hands over her mouth. There is a small man standing in front of her, looking almost human, if it wasn't for the green skin and the round, black eyes that are far too big and wide apart. It's like a frog face, she thinks with a panicked little giggle.

The moment he sees her, he too makes a surprised little sound, and then it suddenly gets darker around them and it feels like something is tugging at her chest. Penny looks down and if not for her hands still on her mouth, she would probably scream.

A little light blue heart is floating in front of her chest. "What ‒?" she has the time to stammer, before suddenly, tiny white flies are coming at her from the front. Confused beyond anything she stays where she is, raising her arms and swatting at the little ‒ creatures? They don't really seem alive, actually.

They pass right through her hands like they don't even exist. For a moment, she lets herself calm down just a bit and she reaches out, trying to catch one of the little things between her fingers, but once again it's like grasping at air. It doesn't even feel like anything other than air. This ‒ this is so weird.

And then, one of them touches her little blue heart and it _hurts_. Penny doubles over with a yell, wrapping her hand around the heart and pressing it close to her body, but two more of the strange flies float right through her hands and bump against the heart inside. There is a number in her head for some reason, a twenty that now quickly ticks down to fifteen. "Stop!" she cries, stumbling back and then hunching in on herself as much as she can. Even though she has no idea what's happening, she somehow knows she has to protect this little heart of hers, this thing she's never seen before but that undeniably feels like a part of her. But she can't do more than huddle over it protectively with her body, which is apparently just as effective as throwing herself right at those flies would be.

"Oh dear." The frogman's voice is quieter and higher pitched than she would have suspected just looking at him. "Oh no, sorry about that! I was just startled, no need to be afraid." Penny is still crouching on the floor, her heart in her hands and her eyes closed, but it stopped hurting. Reluctantly, she looks around and sees no more of the white flies swarming through the air.

The frogman's mouth is stretched into an impossibly wide smile and Penny quickly looks away again with a horrified squeak.

"Hey, hey," he says with an increasingly nervous sounding voice, "I'm sorry, I didn't really mean to enter a fight, that just kind of happened." He lets out a quiet, croaking chuckle. "You're a weird monster. Did nobody teach you how to fight? You need to dodge, little one!" There is an awkward pause and a little cough. "Uh, look, I can't end the fight right now, it's your turn."

He wants to keep fighting? Penny almost starts crying again, she barely hears the rest of his words over the blood rushing in her ears. It hurt, it really hurt when he attacked her, and he wants to keep going. She feels paralyzed, completely trapped in her own rising panic and it's pure instinct that has her hectically searching through her pockets, looking for anything she can use to defend herself with.

The only thing she finds is the plastic knife and it's in her hand and flinging through the air faster than she can even begrudge the fact that this stupid toy survived the fall when her phone didn't. But maybe it's enough, maybe she can scare him away if she pretends to be fierce. She has to make him stop hurting her, that's the only thing in her mind as she throws the toy at him: That he has to STOP and GO AWAY.

The impact is unexpectedly loud. A deep, muffled hit that somehow echoes through her blue heart. When she looks up, she has just enough time to see him staring at her in utter disbelief.

Then, he falls apart. His scary frog face crumbles to white dust, his limbs quickly following, until there is just a little white pile left on the purple floor.

An inappropriately happy sound chimes through her head, the numbers in her mind all growing by a few points. The odd darkness around her recedes, the small heart fades back into her chest. Everything goes back to how it was just minutes before ‒ except for the pile of dust with her toy knife lying next to it. Penny stares at it, until her stomach lurches abruptly and she has to turn away, bending over and puking on the floor.

Shaking and shivering, she wipes her mouth and crawls backwards, away from what just happened, taking just enough time to grab the knife and bring it with her. Even though touching it makes her sob and gag, but it's her weapon, her only weapon. What if someone else tries to ‒ what if she has to ‒

She doesn't want to think. Fleeing to a dark corner where she can see none of the dust, she pulls her legs up and buries her head in her arms, eyes shut tight. This was a bad idea, such a bad idea. She'll just stay here and wait, yes, that's much better, a much better thought. Just sit here and do nothing. Sooner or later, someone will come and bring her back home.

* * *

Gaster is spinning around in his chair, never taking his eyes off his phone and nervously tapping on the screen with his fingertips. To the left of him, Pollard is pretending to do paperwork, but he's really just watching Gaster with sharp eyes, as if wanting to make sure he won't do anything ‒ bad. Every once in a while, he also turns his attention back to Sans and Alphys, but keeping them in check is obviously not a priority for him right now.

Sans is glad for that. It means he can just let his head drop back onto the table and ignore the science book that's still opened up to a page of complicated equations. Freeda explained those to Alphys today, but Sans had some trouble listening ‒ everything sounds a bit dulled on his right ear now and it's making him weirdly dizzy. His right hand hurts when he moves it, so he keeps it clenched up in his pocket, and he's also trying to keep the right leg still, because he gets an odd feeling of pins and needles in it otherwise.

All in all, he might just forget about his right side altogether.

It's one of the reasons why he only notices that Alphys is talking to him after she taps him on the shoulder. When he looks at her he sees her moving her mouth, but he can only understand every other word or so. Gaster's constant mumbling, occasionally interrupted by shouting instructions into his phone and combined with the squeaking of his chair, doesn't make communication any easier.

Huffing in annoyance, Sans grabs Alphys' sleeve and pulls on it insistently, until she curiously leaves her chair on his right side and he can guide her to the one on his left. "Uh," Alphys makes in confusion, but sits down nonetheless. She's smiling at his antics at least. "I-I guess here is better?"

Sans nods once, then lays his head on the table again, though with his face turned in her direction this time, to make sure he doesn't miss anything. Alphys waits for Gaster to get a bit louder again before she leans in and whispers: "Do you think they'll catch the human?"

"Yeah," Sans answers right away, it's obvious after all. He didn't even think about questioning that. "Grynn and Freeda went. They fight good."

With an unhappy little scowl, Alphys drags her claw-like fingernails across the wood patterns of the tabletop. "Y-yeah," she repeats, sounding much less convinced than him. "I guess. So do the Royal Guards, though. I don't really know why grandma had to go, too."

"The Guard knows jack shit about humans," Sans explains generously, and Alphys bursts out into surprised laughter, then quickly hushes him. "Sans! D-don't ‒ don't say words like that!"

"It's right. Gaster said so." Sans is confused. What words does she mean? "The guards are fucking idiots."

Alphys is covering her face with her hands and wheezing desperately. "Oh my God, Sans!" The yellow color of her face is getting more and more of a red tint, Sans has the time to notice, just before she lets her own face be and presses her hands to his mouth instead. She still looks as if she wants to laugh but at the same time knows that she shouldn't. "N-never quote Gaster. Please."

He's grinning behind her hands, because even though she acts like he did something wrong, she seems to be having fun, so he'll take it as a victory. Though, if she asks so nicely, he probably should stop directly quoting Gaster. Just for today.

He taps the back of her hand with his left and she drops them, a cautious look on her face. Carefully, he scales his grin down to a smile. "I'll be good," he says innocently.

"Yeah right," Alphys snorts with her own skeptical smile.

He ignores her lack of faith in him and tries to go back to the original topic. "When they catch the human," he starts slowly, because he's not quoting anyone now and it's still a little harder to make long sentences on his own, "who will kill it?"

Just like that, Alphys suddenly looks very uncomfortable. "I-I don't kn-know," she mumbles, averting her eyes and scratching the back of her head so one of her three fluffy ponytails bops up and down. "Ah, d-do you think, do you think they'll have to? K-k-kill it, I mean?"

Sometimes, talking to her is like peering into a different version of reality, Sans thinks. There are so many things one of them takes for granted that the other cannot even wrap their head around. He nods decisively. "Yes. That's the point." When that doesn't seem enough of an explanation for her, he thoughtfully scratches the tip of his nose. "Um. One monster has to kill the human. Then the monster gets human magic. That's really good. Then Gaster can save monsterkind."

"O-oh." It still doesn't look like she really believes him. "Th-that's good, I suppose. It's just, hm, humans... Are they so bad? I-I mean, all the s-stuff that falls down here from their world, a-all the books and movies ‒ they're really nice. Can bad people make things that are nice?"

Now Sans is confused again. He wasn't thinking about this in terms of good or bad. He's still not entirely sure exactly what a human is. How is he supposed to say whether or not they're nice people?

Luckily, Alphys either grows tired of the topic or she realizes that he's out of his element. Either way, she sits up straight suddenly, waving her hands through the air. "Ah, nevermind. I-It's not like we can do anything about it, r-right?" She nods to herself and flounders around for a moment in search of something new to say, then she bends down to him. "Do you know what's wrong with Pollard?"

Sans really doesn't, but he grins and points to his own head. "Bad haircut?"

Alphys hides a snorting giggle behind her hands and lightly swats him on the shoulder. "I'm serious! He doesn't look good. Sh-should he be here? He's supposed to take care of you, right?"

A confused tilt of the head is Sans' first reaction to that, then he shakes it very slowly. "No. He does experiments."

"Well, yes." Alphys looks unhappy again. "They all do, but they also need to take care of you. M-mum says, when I'm at a friend's house and the grown-up looks sick or isn't even there, then they can't watch over me and I should c-come home right away!"

Instinctively, Sans reaches for her sleeve again, even though he doesn't think he could hold her in place if she decided to leave. "Gaster is here," he says. "Gaster is grown-up. Right?"

"Hey!" Gaster yells and snaps his fingers in their direction, making them both jump and turn towards him. "You gossiping about me now?" They both quickly shake their heads, but Gaster is already jumping out of his chair and striding quickly towards their table. He tosses Pollard his phone and the man's face turns white as he just about manages to catch it.

"They're being stonewalled by the Guard about entering the Ruins," Gaster explains dismissively. "Because upholding bureaucracy is obviously the most important issue right now. Fucking idiots. Just listen in and tell me when something happens." Then he bends down, grabs Sans firmly around the ribcage and scoops him up into his arms in one swift motion.

Alphys makes a worried little sound and Sans is too surprised to produce any kind of noise beyond a tiny puff of air. It's been quite a while since Gaster picked him up.

The creator slumps back into the chair and just as Sans remembers how much fun they had that one time, flying through the lab with their chair, Gaster actually does set Sans down on his knees and then uses one foot to push off the wall and set the chair into motion. They're much slower this time, slow enough that nothing even falls off the tables around them as they roll past, but Sans still feels a little bubble of happy laughter in his chest. He still has time to wave at Alphys, who is watching with round eyes and an open mouth, then they're off around a corner and he can't see her or Pollard anymore.

Gaster makes sure that Sans has a firm grip on his gray sweater, then he takes out a little flashlight and shines it into Sans' right eye while they slowly roll along the aisle. When that apparently tells him what he wanted to know, the flashlight vanishes again and he instead tugs Sans' right hand out of his pocket, shaking it a little so he unclenches it with a wince. "That was one hell of an experiment, huh kiddo?" he says casually, and quietly enough that Pollard and Alphys can probably not hear him over the wheels of the chair grinding along the floor. "Got a bit tense in between."

Sans doesn't know what to do. His left fist is twisted deep into Gaster's sweater, holding on much tighter than he probably needs to, considering they're not very fast right now. He likes it when a creator takes time to talk to him, and especially when Gaster carries him or sits him on his lap or puts an arm around him. Gaster is the only one who ever does that, even if it isn't often.

But something happened during that last experiment and now Sans is ‒ wary. He watches Gaster bend and prod the sore fingers of his right hand and waits more and more anxiously for the point of this conversation.

With a sigh, Gaster drops his hand, pulls Sans up on his knees a little bit and looks at him over the rim of his glasses. "Let's put it behind us, alright." His voice is gentle, but something about it sounds less real than when he usually talks like this. "I'm not saying what you did was okay. You attacked us. You can _never_ " And here his tone grows so much darker that Sans has to shiver, "do that again. Understood?"

Gaster's hand grabs his chin and turns his face forward when Sans tries to look away. The creator's eyes aren't quite as creepy anymore as they were when they were glowing orange, but the stern look is definitely still one that makes Sans' skin crawl. His nod, when he finally manages it, is shaky and restricted by Gaster's hand, but as soon as he makes it clear he understood, the hand is gone and Gaster is smiling again.

"Good!" He speeds their chair up just a tiny bit. "Then I forgive you this one time. And while it was wrong, it was also quite impressive, to be honest. I mean, the classic ting-wham-splat is already one of my favorites, but combined with the bones that's really something. If we have the time, we should train you a bit more, get you to deal some decent damage. I mean, we're limited by your one Attack Point, but, you know." With a small wink, he points quickly back and fourth between their respective souls. "There are ways even for guys like us."

And Sans can't help it, but he smiles back. Not everything the creator says makes sense to him, but it's enough to know he's in a good mood again. Maybe Sans was stupid to be so afraid, just because he yelled at him once. Gaster is the best creator, but he's also just a monster, so he gets angry sometimes. Especially when Sans does something stupid, like attack the creators or try to take back his promise.

No, Sans did a lot of bad things here and he can count himself lucky that Gaster still forgives him. More than that, he said "guys like us." He called them an us! Like Sans and Gaster are somehow similar, but different than the others. Sans likes that.

He carefully leans forward, not moving too fast so he can be sure he's not doing anything wrong, and drops his head against Gaster's shoulder. Gaster lets him. He even puts his arms around Sans' back and pats him a little awkwardly. It's ‒ warm. It makes Sans think of _her_ soul, of how she thought about her son when she...

Sans screws his eyes shut and buries his nose deeper in Gaster thick turtleneck. As much as he wants to shut this all out, there is still something he has to say. "I'm sorry," he mumbles into the sweater, and he feels Gaster lean down a little to catch his words. "I couldn't save her."

"Whatever are you talking about?"

Sans sits up slowly, thinking hard about how to say this. He can't bring himself to look Gaster in the eyes. "She died," he starts slowly, hands lightly covering his blue soul. "In my soul. I tried to hold her. She, she fell and ‒ I couldn't save her. I'm sorry." Talking about it almost makes him cry again, so he quickly stops, stares down at his hands and waits for Gaster to get angry.

Weirdly, he doesn't. He raises an eyebrow instead. "That's what's been eating you?" Gaster's pointy finger pokes Sans' cheek a few times, until he's confused enough to look up to him. "Buddy. You misunderstood the mission parameters there. It was never about saving her, she was a goner from the start."

They look at each other for a moment and Gaster's face grows more and more exasperated, until he pushes up his glasses and rubs his forehead with a groan. "Ugh, okay, look. You can't save a monster that's fallen down. I mean, nobody can, which also means you, specifically, cannot. We just used the few moments of almost-life she had left to try out an up until this point mostly theoretical method of connecting souls. That's it. You weren't supposed to do anything in there, you weren't supposed to prolong her life or even try and save her. My experiments might be a bit unorthodox sometimes, but they're never unrealistic in their goals. And saving a fallen down monster? That's some grade A fantasy bullshit right there."

Sans can't help it, but he gets a tiny bit angry. Just a tad, and it probably comes more from a place of sadness and regret than real rage. His hand clenches more and more around the soft fabric on Gaster's chest, until it feels as if his short fingernails could almost scratch the skin underneath. "Then why not explain before?" he asks, raising his voice just a little and forcing Gaster to move the chair slightly faster, creating more noise to drown out their conversation for the others. "Why ‒ why send me there? It was sad!"

"Sans." Now Gaster sounds very strict again. "Don't be a little shit. You know why this is necessary, I explained it to you. It's not my fault if you don't listen properly."

From one second to the next, the anger drains right away and Sans goes slack, dropping forward into Gaster's arms again. "It was sad," he whispers. "She had a son. She thought about cooking and reading... And flowers. I didn't know those were real. Or was she just dreaming?"

The creator's smile is growing more excited again. "You got really far in, holy crap," he grins, drumming his fingers on Sans' back. "Could you hear her, by chance? Or, well, it wouldn't have been an actual voice, seeing as everything happened in your mindscape, but if you got as close as I think you did, you might have been able to pick up any leftover communications she would have been trying to make; like an imitation of a memory of a voice. Something like that?"

"I heard her," Sans simply says, choosing to ignore all the needlessly complicated stuff. "She said she didn't want to die."

"Brilliant." Gaster looks past him. It's that look in his empty eyes that makes Sans think they're turned to the inside, watching the thoughts race by in his own head. "And is it just me or did your vocabulary get a smidge better? Oh! I bet it turns out you kept some of those imitations of memories. The whole thing with your right side already suggests you had trouble differentiating between the two of you at some point, so when we cut the connection your brain likely couldn't filter out everything that originally belonged to her and eject it again. Oh, this is getting interesting."

Pushing up his glasses, he goes through his schedule in his head ‒ Sans can tell all these different looks apart relatively well by now ‒ and grumbles unhappily about what he sees. "Of course, should have done the debrief right after the experiment. The one time I decide to let the subject rest a bit and shit promptly happens. It's what I get for being nice. Okay, we'll just have to find a moment in the near future when the whole human thing isn't quite as dire, then we'll do a quick debrief, schedule a follow-up experiment ‒ ugh, I could really use a fucking control group." While wheeling past the next desk corner, Gaster stretches out his leg and stops them with one pointy shoe against the table, then he scoops Sans further up his arms with only one hand and gets up from th chair, gesturing wildly with the other hand. "I would already be satisfied with just one control subject or something, I mean fuck, right now there's absolutely no adequate way of putting the development process in context..."

Sans sighs. Though he's somewhat happy he had an actual talk with the creator, it's discouraging that it never really lasts long. Now Gaster is off in a discussion with himself again, carrying Sans around on his pacing through the lab probably only because he forgot by now that he's even holding him.

"Dr. Gaster!" Pollard yells at that moment and the soles of Gaster's shoes scream loudly against the floor as he quickly spins around on the spot. "They're in the ruins, just found the remains of another monster. Presumably a Mr. Froggit, relatives said he snuck into the ruins to search for Monster Candy."

"There's still Monster Candy in the ruins?" Gaster sounds honestly surprised. "Tell Freeda to bring some, we can sell that shit!" During his answer, he already walks swiftly over to Pollard, dropping Sans back into his chair next to Alphys on the way. Just as Pollard, with a very puzzled expressions, turns to talk into the phone again, Gaster snatches it out of his hand. "Don't actually tell her that, you fucking idiot. Freeda!" With the phone pressed to his ear, he resumes walking up and down, only now with that unusual air of nervousness about him that the subject of the human seems to bring out in him. "Capture, don't kill! Have you told that dumb ox of a Royal Guard you have with you? Good, tell him again, and then twice more times. Actually, wait, can you find a stick or something and just knock him out? Yes, I know I'm on speaker phone, so?"

Not really all that interested in the phone call, Sans shifts in Alphys' direction to try and chat with her, but it turns out she is watching Gaster intently. She seems partly excited and partly fearful, chewing on her bottom lip and twisting one of her glittery pencils between her hands.

"Well, turn off the bloody phone then!" Gaster is just now hissing into the receiver, right before he drops the device from his ear, throws himself into the next available chair with his legs dangling over the armrest and stares at the phone in his hand with grim determination. "They just saw the human," he says, maybe to inform Pollard, or maybe just to keep himself busy with talking. "It's likely an LV 2, so it should be fine. Oh!" It seems he remembered something and he starts texting.

"Maybe texting them while they're engaging a human in a fight isn't the best idea!" Pollard says alarmed, but Gaster waves him off dismissively.

"First off, Freeda has the phone, and since she is the one who hogs all the functioning brain cells between you three, she of course turned her phone off. I'm just texting so she can check afterwards. And second, obviously they're not fighting the human, I mean, that's the worst possible idea. They're attacking it from afar to wear it out so they can capture it without risk." He looks up with a fake confounded expression. "Without risk! I think this is the first time I have ever said those words in that combination. How odd."

Pollard has by now managed to rein in his alarm and is standing with his hands folded behind his back, looking straight ahead during Gaster's little speech and appearing completely unimpressed. "Alright, so what is the plan after that?" he asks, trying to sound mostly disinterested. "Where will we put it? Is there even a safe way to keep a live human confined anywhere in the underground?"

"Surprisingly, that is the one part of this whole endeavor that is actually ridiculously easy." Sans wonders about the lack of an insult against Pollard in that sentence for a moment, before he remembers that Gaster is all _excited_ and _nervous_ right now and probably doesn't have the patience for coming up with new ways of being demeaning. "Humans don't have magic, after all, so once we do have it, we can just put it in any locked room and it'll have no way of escape. Though that would be boring of course, we wouldn't be able to access it without risking our very lives." He claps his hand against his thigh with a disbelieving laugh. " _Without risk_ ing, I said it again! What is going on with me today!"

That's what Sans is wondering too, but he can't vocalize any of it; the phone is chiming with a new text message already and Gaster flinches so hard he almost sends it flying.

Then, all the nervous energy bleeds out of Gaster's shoulders in an instant and his posture goes right back to his usual relaxed, but at the same time somehow authoritative slouch. His grin is slow and controlled again. "Gentlemen, my lady," he playfully addresses them and Alphys peeps in surprise at the title, "we caught ourselves a human."

* * *

Penny was right, somebody did come for her.

Not the kind of somebody she was waiting for, of course, and not to bring her home either. But she's trying to cling to the very few things that turn out the way she expected, so that has to be enough.

She didn't try to fight again. The toy knife was right there in her hand, but when she saw the three monsters approach from afar, the thought of watching another one of them crumble to dust before her made her throw the thing against the wall. Then she went right back to cowering in place, burying her hands in her hair and ignoring the weird monster magic happening around her. It didn't matter. She couldn't do anything about it anyways, so she might as well just let it all happen.

She doesn't know what happened after that. Somehow she must have been knocked out, because the next thing she knows is she's waking up in an unfamiliar place.

This is not like the ruins anymore ‒ this is an actual place, where actual people live. Or work, at least. There are white tiles on floor and the walls, cold and clean, not covered in cobwebs like before. Harsh, glaring ceiling lights shine right into her eyes as she blinks them open. Reflections in the shiny surfaces make it seem like light is coming from everywhere at once, the polished tabletops, the slick tiles and the numerous glass and metal containers stacked all throughout the room. She's seen rooms like this on TV, she slowly realizes.

An actual laboratory. If she was back on the surface, this would be really exciting, she always wanted to visit one. As it is, the clearer her mind gets, the faster her heart starts beating in her chest. When she tries to move her arms and legs, there is a sharp pull around her wrists and ankles, keeping her still. It takes a while for her mind to adjust to the situation, to figure out why her field of vision is tilted upwards and what that odd pressure on her face is. A breathing mask, she finally figures out, and she is half lying in a chair. Much like those chairs at the dentists, only that she is pretty sure it's not common practice to tie people down in those.

Her instincts tell her to struggle, to tear at the restraints a few more times, but her mind knows it's useless. Penny goes completely still again, screws her eyes shut and just breathes, in and out, slowly. Just, just calm down. No point in panicking. She directs are decisive _No!_ at the sob that's clawing at the back of her throat, seeking a way out into the world. _No, stop it, what's that going to accomplish? Nothing. Nothing at all._

She woke up to voices, but hasn't had the time and mental capacity to listen to them yet. Now, as she oh so slowly calms herself down, the up to now undefined noise gradually becomes words.

"I find this level of confinement extremely insufficient," one of the voices is complaining right now. It does sound like the voice of someone who likes to complain, but it's also kind of weak and hoarse. Penny carefully cracks one eye open, the same way she does when her mum sneaks into her room on her birthday and Penny pretends to still be sleeping, when she actually watches her as she sets up the presents and balloons at the foot of her bed.

Through the thick web of her eyelashes, she can just about make out the man who is speaking as a surprisingly normal looking person. The only thing weird about him that she can see are the cat ears, but compared to the unsettling sight of the frogman from before, this seems really tame and harmless. Kind of cute, actually. They even move like real cat ears, folded back nervously right now and occasionally twitching in the direction of any new sounds.

Two more voices agree with the catman, and those two Penny recognizes. They were part of the group that came for her in the ruins and much like before, she quickly looks away from them now as well. They look much stranger, especially the taller woman with the dark skin and shiny black hair in a bun. Her head is too big and round, but Penny could live with that if it wasn't for her mouth. It's stretched wide across her entire face, formed in a steady grin even though she seems to be frowning right now, and sharp canines poke out at the corners. It looks even more creepy than it did with the frogman, because it makes her think more of a shark than a frog. Maybe because of the teeth. They look very sharp.

The other one looks fine at first, in comparison. She's very small and very old, she even has those telltale gray curls, the same hairstyle that both of Penny's grandmas have. Her head is a little too big as well, but there is nothing as obviously scary about her as that first woman's terrifying grin. That is, until Penny catches a glimpse of the small eyes behind the thick round glasses and sees that they are black where they should be white. That might still be relatively easy to digest, but combined with the strict expression and the fact that she was the one throwing weird magical triangles at Penny's feet in the ruins, it's enough to make her shudder.

She closes her eyes completely again for a minute when she thinks the small woman is looking in her direction. There was someone else as well, someone very tall and thin in a black coat, but Penny couldn't get a good look at him. Still, by process of elimination, she guesses that the scratchy voice answering to the complaints of the others belongs to him.

"They're not magical," he's saying right now, very slowly and pronounced, as if he said it ten times already. "For all intents and purposes, she's just a little kid. The biggest danger lies in involving her in a formal fight, and none of us is stupid enough to do that." There is a pause. "Can I get a little sign, something that tells me you understand and agree? Traditionally people have been known to nod at such occasions, but I'm willing to take whatever you can give me, so, I don't know, groan a little, wave your arms, dance your name, whatever you're comfortable with?"

"It should be in quarantine at least," the catman complains nervously.

"Your face should be in quarantine," is the other man's very mature retort. "What, you think its humanity is contagious, are we all going to turn into little humans just standing here?"

"That's the point, we don't know!"

"Actually, Dr. Pollard, what you mean to say is that _you_ don't know. Ever met these people who just lead in every single sentence with 'I don't know, but?' You should become one of those people. Time to be a bit more honest with yourself and the world." There is a snapping sound, like plastic gloves, and some hard footsteps. "Fact is, I have worked directly with human souls and a live human before, so, big surprise, I know what I'm doing. This is also all sanctioned by Asgore, if you must know, and he is undoubtedly the local expert on humans."

A cold, sharp finger touches Penny's temple and she sucks in a panicked breath and opens her eyes wide. "Hi kid. I knew you were awake."

She stares at his face, bent closely over hers and grinning. He is white, not just pale but actually deathly white, like a sheet of paper. It makes her think of aliens, looking at his completely bald, eyebrow-less face with the oddly waxen looking skin. His eyes are even darker than the short woman's, the right one small and droopy and the left one a big, perfectly round circle of blackness behind the rectangular glass of his spectacles.

Penny's teeth traitorously begin chattering, even as she tries hard to hold his gaze. The way he looks at her ‒ it doesn't feel like he actually sees her. It's more that he's reading something in her, studying her. He's not looking at a person, he's looking at a specimen.

Penny starts to cry.

She can't help it, not anymore, and she hates herself a little because she tried so hard not to, but the very moment she feels her lower lip start quivering it's already over. She's in a monsterworld, bound to a weird dentist chair, she doesn't have her phone, nobody knows where she went and she hasn't even seen a trace of Mulazim so far and there are creepy monsters talking about human souls and _she's pretty sure she killed someone today_ and also there's an itch on her nose that she can't scratch and everyone's eyes look weird and ‒

The scary guy looks startled at first, but she cries very loud and ugly and obvious, so he quickly gets it and then his face just falls into tired annoyance. "Seriously?" He stands up again, lifting his shoulders and turning to shake his head at the other monsters. "I swear I didn't even do anything this time."

"You have one of those faces, Wing Ding," the small woman ‒ teases? The words sound like teasing, but her tone and face say serious business.

"So, this is a normal part of working with live humans?" the grinning woman definitely teases, but with a lot of mean spirit mixed in. "You being the expert and all, I'd figure you know exactly what to do."

Penny can feel her entire face grow red and hot in shame and she tries to anxiously swallow the tears that want to keep coming, but it only gives her violent hiccups before her next helpless bout of crying. She just wants to go home. She just wants her mommy. She'll never run away again if she just gets to go home now!

"Ugh, wait," the tall mean man says, before disappearing out of Penny's ‒ granted, very watery ‒ field of vision. The small woman starts interfering with something he does for a moment, but he doesn't seem very impressed and a short moment later, something plops down on a chair next to Penny, which is then pushed closer so it's right in her face. "Here," the man says. "Other kids! Tell them all about your problems!"

On the chair, there truly are two other children, looking at her with wide, confused eyes. Penny stares back, still wracked with hiccups, but the pure shock of seeing them there already made her a bit quieter.

It's a boy and a girl. The girl is obviously older. And yellow. Penny chokes on a desperate little laugh. Why can't anything be normal here?

Though, apart from the yellow and slightly scaly skin, the girl actually looks kind of nice. She wears pink, round glasses and her poofy blond hair needs to be bound back in three ponytails to stay out of her face. Her sweater looks really soft and cozy and normal, which is a weird thing to get hung up on, but Penny can't help herself. If it wasn't for the skin color, this could be a girl Penny would approach on the schoolyard to play with.

And that made her sound really racist, what the heck?

The girl clears her throat awkwardly and looks around with big eyes, obviously very intimidated. "Uh, h-hello," she stutters quietly, even waving at Penny a little. "I-I-I'm A-Alphys. Nice to m-m-meet you?" Penny still has the hiccups, but her crying is mostly silent now as she stares at this Alphys, who might be the first nice and kind of normal monster she met here. Minus the scary lab and the dentist chair, this is more like Mulazim and she imagined meeting monsters would be like.

"Hello," the boy joins in. He's a lot younger, more of toddler. He has dark brown skin ‒ a normal color, thank God ‒ and the same big, round, black eyes that those two scientists have and Penny is starting to think that this may just be a really average monster feature. At least the boy has white pupils, so she can tell where he's looking. Other than the eyes, he too looks just like a normal kid. With bad teeth.

Penny finally gets completely distracted from crying when she sees that he's wearing neon pink sneakers with shiny soles. That's. That's kind of awesome.

The boy immediately notices where she's looking and he proudly lifts his left foot for her to inspect it. "The best shoes!" he says with a giant grin ‒ but one that's still within normal proportions, unlike that taller lady's grin. "From Alphys."

Penny swallows a few times. "They're ‒ they're really cool," she finally croaks with a voice thick from tears.

The boy nods enthusiastically and begins kicking the metal corner of her chair to show the lights in the soles. "They light up too!"

Alphys holds his foot back with a little snorting laugh. "Oh my God Sans, don't kick her!" She looks back to Penny, just a tad less nervous now. "S-sorry, uh, Sans does weird things s-sometimes. B-but he's nice! A-ah, um, what's ‒ what's your n-name?"

"Penny. It's short for Penelope."

"Penny Penny Penny Penny," Sans immediately starts chanting to himself, as if he's trying out the word. Penny and Alphys exchange a look and before she knows it, they both make the same, kind of helpless giggle.

"Is that enough, then?" the small woman suddenly asks, sounding very tense from where she's standing right behind Alphys, a hand on her shoulder.

The tall man waves his hands through the air. "Possibly, but leave her for a bit longer." He turns to Penny again and she immediately shrinks back in her seat as far as she can. "Penny, huh? There's no reason to be afraid, see, we have kids here all the time! It's perfectly safe. This is Sans' chair you're sitting in, actually."

Sans snaps out of his name testing and nods eagerly, patting the metal armrests with his stubby fingers. "Lots of tests here," he informs her helpfully.

"Why are we even speaking to it?" catman whispers very loudly to grinwoman. "Shouldn't we just put it back to sleep?"

"The tests I have in mind require a conscious soul," meanman answers, his smile still stiffly turned towards Penny and she does not trust him even a little bit. "I want to see what we're in for before the most important step. Also gives us time to find a decent candidate. Grynn, I already volunteered you by the way, from the people in this lab you're the most suited. Process of elimination, really, since everyone else is either sick, old or broken."

"Well, I don't volunteer," grinwoman says with a very sharp laugh. "As if anyone who knows how you work would let you run tests on their souls!"

See, none of that sounds good, that all sounds very bad actually and it doesn't help calm Penny down at all. She's done crying for now, but that doesn't mean she's in any way okay with those soul test thingies these people are talking about.

Before she can really work herself up into another panic, there is a little beeping sound and meanman pulls a pager out of his pocket with lots of curses. They only get louder when he actually reads the thing. "Can't even get one day, one lousy day off!" he rages as he jabs an answer, already on his way to the exit. "I hate people so much." He turns around at the doors and yells instructions while he walks away. "Keep an eye on her for now, don't sedate her. Don't do, no, don't even touch anything until I'm back, shouldn't be too long. Grynn, you're with me on this."

The woman named Grynn makes a face like a thousand years of suffering before following her boss outside. As soon as the doors slide shut behind the pair, the small woman pulls Alphys away from Penny's chair and somewhere outside her field of view. Sans watches, a little confused and he has just enough time to turn to Penny and shrug before he, too, is whisked away. It sounds like books are being dropped on a table with a bit more force than entirely necessary and the small woman gives some stern instructions. Apparently Sans and Alphys still have homework to do and Penny catches herself in a very mistimed moment of pity.

With the mean man gone ‒ Gaster is his name, as she quickly finds out by listening to the other two, Freeda and Pollard ‒ things aren't as scary as before anymore. She's still strapped in a chair though, with no idea what's going to happen to her, but now that the most scary person in the room isn't there anymore, it's easier for her to just lie back and accept that she can't change anything anyways.

If she could get out of the chair, maybe she could find a way to call for help. She'd have to find a phone or a computer somewhere and try and access the internet. Could she log into twitter from here? It might be slightly ridiculous to call the police that way, but if she can somehow let anyone know what's going on, they could send a rescue party.

Worth a shot, at least. Now she only has to wait for an opportunity to get out of this chair. Sooner or later they will have to loosen the restraints ‒ right? She has to go to the toilet at some point, they can't just force her to stay here and ‒ ew. Nope, not thinking about that. So, when they untie her for just a moment, she could, uh, attack them? They seemed scared about that. Gaster made it sound like they couldn't beat her in a real fight. Or a "formal" fight, as he called it, which is probably that weird thing with the glowing heart and the white flies that happened with the frogman.

Well. That's kind of a plan. Her heart starts hammering again at the thought and luckily, it's less out of fear and panic now and more from the prospect of fighting. Now she just needs to patiently wait here and take advantage of the right moment.

There's not much else she can do other than wait. Freeda is watching Sans and Alphys somewhere in a different corner of the lab and the catman Pollard is awkwardly shuffling papers on a desk next to Penny, pretending not to stare at her when she looks away.

He coughs a lot. It sounds pretty bad, with lots of wheezing and gasping in between, and it gets a little worse the more time passes. "Pollard," Freeda finally calls over to him, sounding both annoyed and a tiny bit concerned, "you know there are breathing filters in the magic quarantine chamber." And she points to a section of the lab that is probably meant to be sealed off, but is actually wide open and has a leftover dislodged sliding door lying on the floor in front of it.

Pollard slaps some of his papers down almost angrily. "Well, I can't watch over the human from in there," he huffs and immediately clears his throat loudly. After a second, Freeda is suddenly at his side and pushes him lightly. "Just go," she says. "I can sit here for a while."

Instead of answering, he rubs his forehead and tries swiping some sweat slicked hair out of his eyes, but he misses the strands and just kind of fumbles for a bit. He stands up, rather hesitantly, and clutches the back of the chair for balance. "Uh," he mumbles and Freeda's frown intensifies, "I dunno ‒"

Freeda is already moving even before Penny realizes that Pollard is slowly tilting forward. The small woman grasps him by the arms and tries for a moment to keep him upright, but then his legs just give out under him and he tumbles to the floor in an ungraceful heap. Freeda just barely manages to get her hands on his head and keep it from smacking against the tiles.

"Pollard?" Penny hears Sans' worried little voice from the homework table. "Pollard?"

Freeda waves in his direction. "Don't interfere." Her voice is tight and strained as her hands pat Pollard's chest as if searching for something. A second later she's already on her feet again, typing away on her pager while running for an operating table next to Penny. She wheels it over to Pollard's side, folds it down so she can roll the taller man onto it, then she presses a few buttons to make it unfold again and pushes it with all her strength toward the quarantine chamber.

Penny strains her neck as much as possible to watch and she sees Sans running along behind her, fiddling with his hands in front of him nervously and continuously asking "Pollard?" with a very small voice. Then all three of them disappear into to chamber and Penny loses track of them.

For a long, long moment, everything is quiet.

The next moment, Penny starts in surprise when Alphys suddenly appears on the chair next to her, looking right at her with frightened eyes, but also a sort of quiet resolve. "C-can you find a way back home?" she whispers, with decidedly less stuttering than before.

Penny stares at her, her mouth dry in anticipation. The correct answer is No, but she has a plan and that's almost as good as a Yes, so she nods her head.

Alphys nods back, the fear on her face becoming smaller and smaller. She reaches out, then looks up at her in a last second of hesitation. "You wouldn't hurt anyone, right?"

She already did, Penny thinks, tearing up again just a little, but she swallows it and vigorously shakes her head. If she can help it, she really, really doesn't want to hurt anyone else.

And just like that, with barely even shaking fingers, Alphys unties her arms and feet and takes a small step back as Penny scrambles out of the chair as if it was on fire. She rips the breathing mask from her face, throws a look at the chamber where the others are, and then gives Alphys a very swift hug.

"H-hurry!" she squeaks, patting her back twice and then pushing her off. "She paged someone, they're already on the way!"

Penny takes just one more second to choke a desperate "Thank you" in her direction, then she runs to the exit as fast as she can, her entire body trembling from adrenalin cursing through her veins.

* * *

Sans shouldn't have left. Freeda told him not to interfere, but like an idiot he still walked after her, watching her as she gave Pollard better air to breathe and tried to take care of his soul. Why did he think he could be helpful there, he couldn't do anything, he should have stayed with Alphys.

And just when the medics come to look at Pollard, everything goes red and a shrill, blaring siren starts sounding so loudly that Sans feels his bones vibrate. Before he knows it, there are distress calls delivered to everyone's pager and Freeda is screaming ‒ actually screaming! ‒ at Alphys, who just stands with unshed tears glistening in her eyes, her shoulders square and her face enraged, biting her lip hard to keep herself from screaming back. Sans takes one look at the empty chair and knows what happened.

Everyone's too busy screaming or healing or being unconscious, in Pollard's case, to notice how he runs out of the lab. He thinks his blinking shoes might have been a dead give-away, but with the red light blinking from the ceiling, his little bit of pink goes blissfully unnoticed.

There is only one way to go from here. Two, if you count the elevators, but they're at the far end of the hall and they have a red warning light shining over them, telling everyone that they're out of order, so Sans runs the only other way: Left along a dark, now red lit corridor without doors or windows anywhere.

Alphys was unsure from the start, he knew that, she told him! He should have told on her. If he had just tried actually thinking for a little bit, he could have figured out that she didn't like the plan, that she would likely do something to ruin it. It's his fault the human is gone, the very least he can do is try and bring it back.

It was nice. It's name was Penny. He couldn't really see the difference between her and a monster. But she isn't one, she isn't monsterkind, so something must be different about her. It's got to be her soul. Something in her soul makes her expendable, he has to trust in that. Gaster explained it to him, it's not his fault if Sans is too stupid to understand. He can still do his part.

The hallway continues in two directions, but at the far left end is only one door that looks exactly like the other doors leading to laboratories that Sans knows, so there's no exit there. Sans' blinking soles screech loudly on the floor as he takes a sharp turn to the right and keeps running.

He's never moved so much in his life. He starts feeling warmer, his forehead is sweaty and it gets harder to breathe. Seems there was a pretty good reason he never moved so much before.

A deep, metallic, completely disinterested sounding voice starts declaring "red alert" over the facility-wide intercom, something that Sans finds a tiny bit redundant, considering the red light and the blaring alarms everywhere. But, whatever, he's not one to judge. Then it proceeds to declare a lockdown, asking that everyone remain exactly where they are.

Well, too late for that, Sans keeps running. Something is happening around the next corner, he can't yet see what exactly it is, but it's darker there and every few seconds, something swirling and white flashes up and disappears again before he can recognize it. He skids around the corner just in time for one of the white things to be headed right his way, and with a breathless yelp, he manages to quickly dance out of the way.

Penny is there, with her back to him, her soul visible in front of her chest and tinged orange as she hectically twirls from one side of the hallway to another, evading the twisting, complicated cubes that rush at her in straight lines. Gaster is facing her from a few feet away, his soul visible as well in its usual, weak orange-white tint. There is a frown of deep concentration on his face, his normally smooth forehead creased up and sweaty. His eyes, now with their magically induced orange spark again, flicker over to Sans for barely a millisecond before he concentrates on the fight again, employing just a sharp, precise gesture to tell him to STAY OUT OF THE WAY.

"Please child, you do not need to do this," an incredibly deep, sad voice suddenly echoes down the hall, and only then does Sans notice the man standing behind Gaster. How he overlooked him is beyond him, because he is even taller than Gaster and about three times as wide, with blond hair forming a mighty mane around his face and two white, thick horns curling up and backwards from his temples. A long, blue cape billows around his golden shining armor, even more impressive than Gaster's black labcoat, and he carries a red, spear-like weapon that is at least five times Sans' height long.

"You wanna kill me!" Penny screams back, as she lunges forward and swipes at Gaster with the head of a broken beaker she must have nicked from some lab along the way. "He already said that. I'm not just gonna let you kill me!" She sounds like she's crying a bit again, but now it's pure rage that makes her voice crack, barely fear and panic anymore.

"Asgore!" Gaster implores urgently as he manages to very closely tumble out of the way.

He's ‒ he's not very good at fighting. Sans realizes that with a start from just that one hectic, miscalculated step that almost makes him lose his balance and has him cursing as he falls against the wall. He quickly pushes himself off again to stand in the middle of the hallway, but at the same time he attacks with his bullets and the movement has them missing their target by a long shot. The only thing that gives him an edge is his orange magic, which is forcing Penny to keep moving at all times or take damage otherwise.

Asgore, King Asgore, the giant man with the horns, takes a step forward, somehow making his weird spear disappear into thin air and raising his hands beseechingly. His eyes stay on Sans for a moment longer than Gaster's when he notices him, but he too knows to better concentrate on the raging human swinging broken glass at the Royal Scientist. "We don't have to. It's Penny, isn't it? Penny, please, if we all sit down together and talk, we can solve this debacle without anyone else having to get hurt."

"Motherfucking dicknipples, Asgore!" Gaster yells, out of breath from his next, failed dodge, when the beaker hits and his soul vibrates painfully as it loses points. "Kill this cockshitting bitch already!"

"We can find another way!" Asgore desperately answers, begging both Penny and Gaster now to stop this nonsense. "Dings, she is a child! Please, you don't have to do this. Penny, sweet child, please lay down your weapon. I promise I will not hurt you."

"It's really more about her hurting me right now!" Gaster gasps. His next attack hits Penny's heart a few times and she sobs in pain and desperation, but then she darts forward in a sharp zig zag course and lands another, powerful hit against Gaster's soul.

He stumbles backwards with a painful wheeze. For a moment, the fight stutters to a halt as Gaster falls on one knee, grasping at his weak soul and swaying dangerously. Asgore reaches a hand towards him, deep concern on his face, but stops before he can pass that line where the air gets darker, that line that marks the battle and that he can't cross without becoming part of it.

Suddenly, without even getting up, Gaster's arm snaps up and a thick weave of bullets rains down on Penny in a tight, fast pattern. She dodges the first wave, but then more twisting tesseracts shoot at her from the side and she stops before changing direction, cringing in pain from that short second of non-movement, then she immediately gets hit twice and yells loudly as she loses her footing. Sans can't see anyone's health points, but he feels them, much like he felt _her_ soul in his own and heard her voice. At the end of the turn, when Gaster drops his arm, breathing heavily without even having the energy to be mad his attack didn't end it, they're both down to their last breath. Their last point.

Penny is past the point of hesitation. As soon as she is able, she lunges forward, the beaker held tightly in her cramping hand, her eyes wet but clear.

Gaster doesn't even try to move, he is done. For just a split second, he looks at Asgore and Sans knows that the king is supposed to step in. The king is supposed to end this, one way or another, and if he kills the human, he also gains its power and is that what Gaster wanted all along?

It doesn't matter, because the king is stepping back, not forward, the king is not going to do it, never, he can't.

 _~ting_.

She slams into the ground.

Bones crack out of the floor and rip into her body.

A sickening crunch of bone on bone.

A wet squelching sound as the force lifts up her tiny, red body. Small, soft splatters and the scraping of her shifting, dislodged skullcap as she slowly slides back down again.

Her small, cyan heart stays floating in the air for a moment. Just as a thin rip forms along its middle, a narrow glass container materializes around it and snaps shut, keeping the heart intact.

The magic bones turn cyan while they shrink and disappear into the ground.

Sans looks at her and wonders why she doesn't turn to dust.

Then he wonders if her father read to her in bed.

Or if she dreams of flowers, too.

Dreamed.

Beyond her body full of holes, Asgore stands with shoulders slumped and eyes cast to the side. Gaster holds the glass container and a disapproving glare. "Sans," he snarls, rubbing his forehead, "you fucking idiot."

* * *

A/N: Since I got a lot of guest reviews on the last few chapters, I just wanted to take a moment to say a big thank you! I wish I could reply directly to let you know how happy I am about your reviews, but I hope this is enough. Honestly, every single comment makes my day and I'm really happy people are taking the time to read my self-indulgent nonsense :3


	9. New Home

**New Home**

Asgore and Gaster are talking. Sans should probably pay attention to that, but Penny, short for Penelope, is a fleshy mess full of holes on the floor, on a bed of red that is sluggishly growing, and growing, and growing... how is there so much red in her if she's barely taller than Alphys?

Sans' right side hurts, a twinge in his shoulder, a pinch in his leg, a crack in his ear. Right now, he's almost glad for the lingering black shadows in his right eye. A thick bone went straight through her head, in between the eyes and out again at the back of her skull. Now it's all shifting apart slowly. Sans doesn't know if he can actually hear the scraping and squelching of her head melting to pieces or if it's all in his own head, right there with _her_ dented skull and missing limbs and dusty soul.

Penny's soul isn't dusty, nor is it bloody. Even the little tear that started forming in the middle is not there anymore, it's whole and unharmed and bright cyan, floating inside the little glass container in Gaster's hand.

In Asgore's hand. When did that happen? People seem angry, Sans thinks. Gaster's black, pointy shoes disrupt the growing red lake, destroy its beautiful round form and leave ugly smears and shoe prints instead. Sans looks up with a disapproving frown.

Asgore doesn't seem to like it either; his other hand shoots forward and pulls the creator back by his elbow. He's still not looking in Sans' direction, but his face is dark and angry. "Don't even think about it," he says, calmly, though there's a warning in it, a threat almost, and a lot of quietly sizzling rage.

Twisting his arm sporadically but not really with any hope of actually escaping the king's grasp, Gaster turns and glares at him. "Well, he's going into shock, somebody has to snap him out of it," he spits, his own anger being the loudly and openly boiling type. "You seem set on just standing around and watching people in danger today, so excuse me for taking initiative."

"You will keep your distance from the child." The way he says it, it sounds like he is stating a fact instead of issuing a command. Sans is still very much preoccupied by the ruined lake of blood, absently rubbing his ear that insists on pretending it can hear broken bones chafing against each other ‒ but in a small corner of his mind, he can't help but be impressed by how not-angry the king can make his anger sound.

He loses sight of the cyan heart as it disappears behind a flowing blue cape. Then he loses sight of the rest of her when a big wall of golden, shining metal shifts in between him and Penny. Two hands, each bigger than Sans' head, drop down on his shoulders and firmly keep him in place as he tries to step to the side and look past the giant in front of him. The face that Sans is suddenly forced to focus on instead is full of yellow hair and swirling worry lines. Two big, blue eyes stare right into Sans' with something so gentle, so careful and sad in them, that Sans is suddenly worried about breaking this man by frowning at him too hard.

That just won't do. The king shouldn't look so terribly sad. Sans lifts his tiny hand to the round, soft face and carefully pats its cheek. "You're alright," he says, enforcing it with a single nod.

Oh, that didn't work at all. Asgore lowers his head with a deep, shaky sigh and presses two fingers to his eyes, his shoulders tremble with something that's a mixture of a chuckle and a sob. Sans quickly pulls his own hand back, worried that he made it worse, but when the king looks up again, he is smiling. A kind of painful looking smile that he's trying very hard to make gentle, it seems, but that's still filled with sadness more than anything else. "Yes," he rumbles with a voice that positively vibrates through the air. "Of course. My name is Asgore. It is unlikely you remember, but I have met you before, Sans. You were ‒ put to sleep at the time."

"For tests," Sans explains.

Asgore hums in understanding and very weakly pats his shoulder where he is still clutching it with one hand. "Is it alright if I carry you, small one?"

Weird question. Gaster never asks that, he just does it. Sans tries to shrug past the weight of Asgore's hand on his shoulder and then, because he can't think of a reason not to, he nods.

The way Asgore lifts him up is weird, too. He does it all slowly and carefully, whereas Gaster usually just swoops him up the way it suits him best. Asgore seems very worried about doing anything wrong, so Sans pats the back of his hand encouragingly and says "You're doing good." He gets another painful little chuckle in response, but it sounds a bit more genuine now.

For some reason, once Sans is sitting on Asgore's bent arm and leaning sideways against his chest, Asgore uses his other hand to turn Sans' head into the crook of his neck and then cover his eyes before he starts walking. Sans isn't sure what to think about that at first, but then it doesn't matter, because it's warm and quiet and feels surprisingly safe.

It's only when they've already walked a pretty long way, Gaster quietly following behind them judging by the sound of his footsteps, that Asgore reluctantly lifts his hand from Sans' face. For a moment, Sans wonders about Penny, whether she went back to recreating a nice, red lake in the hallway somewhere behind them or if maybe somebody collected her by now. Surely they wouldn't just leave her there.

Maybe... well, they have her soul. Maybe that means they can still fix her? She didn't turn to dust after all, the parts are all still there, just ‒ dislodged. Not where they're supposed to be. So they can put them back together, right? Just sew her up, put the soul back in after all the research is done and they don't need it anymore, and then Penny can just ‒ do whatever she wanted to do. Sans doesn't even know what that was. Why did she leave the lab, apart from wanting to kill Gaster?

Nobody tells him where they're going. Usually that's not much of a question for him, there aren't all that many different places to go, after all. Just laboratories and other laboratories, which all look mostly the same anyways. But now, as he occasionally squints past Asgore's shoulder just to make sure he doesn't fall asleep in his arms, he realizes that there must be a lot more corridors and rooms to the facility than he previously knew, because this looks very unfamiliar. No more creepy black and dark green or stark white tiles anywhere he looks. Now there is gray, and more gray, then a slightly brighter gray and a bit of darker gray.

For a second, he gets frightened, thinking of before, way back when he hadn't met Gaster yet and was still missing the tank, when the creators shut him down at night and ripped the thoughts from his mind before pushing him into the gray void, him waiting for morning and for being himself again. Sans shudders and turns his face further into Asgore's neck.

After a very long walk, the footsteps stop sounding so harsh and instead make a quiet rustling noise. It makes him think of paper, but thinner or more dry. It's definitely not something he's ever heard before. Then a door creaks open and suddenly it's really warm. Sans blinks, finally curious enough to risk a look around.

He's in a house. Like the ones from the pictures. His soul pulses eagerly in his chest, even though everything is still very gray. Somehow though, it feels like a warm gray, not a cold and dangerous one. Everything here is warm, he thinks almost awestruck. There are no glinting metals and sharp corners, no frail glass containers and orderly stacked tubes, no open drawers of needles and chemicals. Instead there is wood everywhere, rounded corners on everything, soft lines and warm light. The air smells like ‒ like something he's never smelled before, kind of fresh and sweet, he can't even wrap his head around it.

"Welcome to New Home," Asgore murmurs to him, his hand lightly stroking Sans' back. "Can I set you down?"

Sans decides in that moment not to question the weird king anymore, because that might just be too much questioning for him to handle today. He's in an actual house, looking at actual wooden furniture and colorful pictures on the walls, it smells nice all around ‒ this day is already too out of the ordinary for him to ever figure out what exactly is even happening. So he nods and tries not to wonder about the overly gentle way he is put down on the floor and held by the shoulders for a few seconds longer than strictly necessary, as if Asgore doesn't believe he's able to stand by himself.

As soon as he's sure that Sans is standing securely on his own two feet, he lets him go and bends down awkwardly to unclasp the shiny boots of his armor. "Shoes off, please," he says, glancing at Sans with a friendly smile and then scowling up at Gaster, who is leaning in the door frame with his arms folded.

"Seriously?" Sans hears him mutter and after a quick staring contest between him and the king, Gaster pushes himself off the frame and aggressively undoes his shoelaces. Not without forming a few cusswords with his hands on the way down, of course, but Asgore doesn't seem to notice that. Sans very reluctantly slips out of his pink sneakers, taking a moment to wipe a few drops of blood off of them before neatly arranging them on the mat next to the door.

While Asgore leads them into the next room, where a little fire is burning in the corner next to a row of four cozy looking armchairs, the king gradually takes off more and more pieces of his armor, lining them up against the wall and folding up his cape on top of the golden pile. He looks a lot smaller now than before, in the light blue button down shirt and beige pants he was wearing underneath.

Gaster shuffles after him with an unhappy frown. Sans thinks that he seems a lot less like himself without the pointy dress shoes. "I'm guessing your family isn't here, then?" he asks, sounding unusually tired and unsarcastic. His whole demeanor is more ‒ shaky than usual, and it takes Sans a second to remember that the creator still only has one HP left.

Asgore waves his hand toward the table and Gaster almost immediately falls into the nearest chair with a relieved breath. "They went to visit relatives in Waterfall," Asgore explains, walking towards yet another little room to the left and indicating to Sans with a small gesture to follow him. "Tori plans to stay for a few days."

Sans isn't entirely sure why he was supposed to follow Asgore, as he just rummages through a tall fridge, warms up a bit of water, collects some eating utensils and returns to the other room again, all the while with one hand lightly touching Sans' back and guiding him along. Every few seconds, he makes sure to smile down at him reassuringly and Sans automatically grins back.

They end up all sitting at the table together, Gaster on one end and Sans and Asgore on the other. The food that Asgore put down in front of Gaster is devoured within seconds. Sans got a plate as well, but he doesn't know what the sweet smelling, triangular food on it is and he's not very hungry anyways, so he ignores it. Asgore has a cup of hot water with a little bag in it and he's slowly stirring it with a tiny spoon.

The food must have replenished all of Gaster's health, because he almost immediately goes back to his usual, casually sophisticated posture and smile, laying his hands on the table and pressing the fingertips together in a little tent. "So," he starts. "Maybe you want to quit the stink-eye now and actually use your words?"

"I do not think you really want me to," is Asgore's calm and quiet answer. "I undoubtedly will, but not in the presence of the child." Gaster's only answer to that is a brow furrowed in confusion, which Asgore ignores in favor of turning towards Sans instead. "Sans, I would like you to stay here for a while. The CORE is not a place for a child. I promise we will take good care of you here."

Before Sans can even examine how he feels about that, Gaster is already sitting up in his chair and leaning towards Asgore accusingly. "You don't even know what the fuck you're doing," he says tightly. "He's not a normal child, you dimwit, you can't just pull him out of the lab and treat him like one."

The fire in the corner suddenly bursts into the air in an arch and Gaster jerks back in surprise as round little fireballs light up in front of him. Asgore has not moved an inch, still stirring the water in his cup calmly, but the air around him feels hot and angry, so Sans knows it must be his fire. For a moment, Sans is sure that an enormous argument will break out and he winces a bit as Asgore opens his mouth, fully expecting him to put all the rage glistening in his eyes into bellowing words.

But all he says is "Please. Mind your language." Then he taps his spoon against the cup a few times, removes the bag from the water and makes the flames disappear back into thin air.

Gaster is trying not to look bothered, but Sans can see the nervous sweat collecting on his forehead.

"My wife will be overjoyed to have you with us," Asgore continues as if nothing happened and it takes Sans a few seconds to remember what they were even talking about. "And my children are always happy to have a new playmate. I think you will like them."

"Oh yeah, splendid idea," Gaster laughs deprecatingly. "You're raising a fu ‒ a frickin human." His mouth twists awkwardly around the not-swearword and he makes a face like he just swallowed a bug. "Sans and humans have a great history of mutual respect and onesided brutal murder, so this can only end well."

For some reason, Asgore insists on talking to Sans more than to Gaster. Instead of answering the creator, he turns to Sans and crouches down in his chair a bit, resting his elbows on his knees and bringing his face as close to Sans' eye level as possible. "You are not a murderer, my child," he says quietly and intently. "You acted to defend the life of another. The action was rash and misinformed, but it came from a place of caring. So I forgive you. If I tell you not to harm my human child under any circumstances, will you listen?"

Sans decides that he really likes Asgore's voice. Or maybe he just likes the way he speaks to him. It's so different from the creators and his mind tells him to feel insulted at being treated as if he's stupid ‒ but at the same time, he just kind of knows that it isn't meant like that and that he really has no reason to. Also, he knows that the king is a very important person who gives very important orders, so listening to those orders is probably a good idea. With a nod and a smile, he agrees to the king's terms.

Asgore pats his head a few times. "Good. Thank you."

"Right." Gaster doesn't sound impressed. "A child nodding. Now that's something you can stake the life of your family on."

"Between the nod of a toddler and an entire manipulative speech from you, I will gladly put my trust in the toddler." The hand stays on Sans' head while he speaks to Gaster, and Sans doesn't know what to do with all this ‒ all this _touching_. He doesn't dislike it, he just doesn't _understand_ it. "Your attempts at making me do what you want by provoking concern about the safety of my family are your cheapest and most transparent tactic yet, considering you have made it abundantly clear in the past how you feel about me raising a human child."

"Well, you being a big fluffy ball of forgiveness when it comes to murder but at the same time being in a giant huff about me telling some lies is your most hypocritical behaviour yet." Just as Asgore's glare at him intensifies tenfold, Gaster hastily puts up his hands defensively. "Yes, I know, different circumstances, adult versus child, conscious decisions, bla bla. I wonder though, if you now find the murder of that human so forgivable, how is it you conveniently stood by and didn't do it yourself during the actual fight? You were completely willing to let me get turned to dust just so you could keep your own sense of morality intact, making it necessary for Sans to step in in the first place. Very big of you to forgive him for that now, seeing as you're the one who basically drove him to do it."

Asgore shakes his head with a sad smile. "Are you really just grasping at straws right now," he asks with a tone saying he already knows the answer perfectly, "or are you actually upset that I didn't immediately run to save you?"

Throwing up his arms with an exasperated groan, Gaster falls back into his chair. "Do you always have to bring your bloody emotions into everything? That's not even remotely what I was talking about."

Asgore answers with an actual chuckle. "Surprisingly, I do sometimes notice when you're being passive aggressive." He sobers up very quickly though and slowly runs his fingers through his long beard. Gaster is folding his arms over his chest, tapping his socked foot on the floor lightly and acting as if he isn't waiting for him to continue. "I cannot say what I would have done had Sans not stepped in," the king finally admits. "I wanted to help you. I also didn't want to kill a child, monster or not. As it is, it did not matter in the end."

Gaster shakes his head with a small scoff. "It shouldn't be a dilemma. You save the monster and kill the human. It's not difficult."

"For any normal monster with a wholesome soul, it is very difficult."

"Oh, ouch, a dig at my soul." Gaster presses a hand to his chest and pretends to be in pain. "I'm starting to think you actually want to hurt my feelings."

The breath that Asgore takes before answering is big and slow, he closes his eyes while breathing out and carefully lays his hands flat on the table. When he opens his eyes, they are full of pitying resignation. "Dr. Gaster," he starts quietly, and there's something in the way he says it, like he very consciously chose that particular way of addressing him. It doesn't help that Gaster actually flinches a little when he hears it, as if he was expecting to hear something else. "Your friendship has brought me nothing but lies and deception. You have manipulated me, misused your influence over me, have taken blatant advantage of my trust, disregarded my direct orders and put others in danger by doing so. This ‒" He almost helplessly gestures at Sans, his blue eyes filled with sadness and deep regret, "this is as far as I'm willing to go. I think ‒ sadly, I think I am done believing that you're better than this."

A muscle underneath Gaster's eye is twitching. Sans expects him to fling a scathing retort, to grin and brush off the words like he always does. But instead Sans watches with growing confusion as Gaster near silently clears his throat, looks to the side and awkwardly switches his crossed legs. It takes him a full five seconds before he manages to look up at Asgore again with an empty smile. "Well, considering most people reach that point of clarity within hours of meeting me, I'm still thinking of giving you a medal of endurance or something. Or, alternatively, a big punch in the face for even being so stupid for so long." The pity in Asgore's eyes grows with every word, but Gaster squares his shoulders and snaps his hand through the air as if to just slap all of this away. "No matter. Back to things that are actually important then."

Sans still isn't entirely over the fact that Gaster looked honestly _hurt_ right there, when the conversation is abruptly cut off by the rattling of keys and the sound of the front door opening. Asgore jerks around in surprise and stands up, but is hesitant to leave the room. "Honey, are you back already?" he asks loudly through the door.

It's quiet, then there are two sets of footsteps, both very light, one moving away from them and the other coming closer. The door creaks open a little and a small, very colorless person with a pair of bulky, black headphones around their neck reluctantly sticks their head in. "Hello, Mr. Dreemurr," they almost whisper, and when they notice Sans and Gaster sitting at the table they seem to shrink back even more, their white eyes widening nervously. "Uuh... Chara had a bit of anxiety, I think... so Mrs. Dreemurr told me to take them home. I'm supposed to babysit. I'm sorry, I didn't think you'd be here. And you have guests, oh no..."

"That's quite alright, Blooky, don't worry about it," Asgore says a tad too quickly, lifting his hands in a calming motion. "Is Chara doing better now?"

"I don't know. Maybe? They didn't talk to me. I gave them chocolate. Was that alright? Oh no, I should have asked... I'm sorry. I thought sweets might make them happy. Sorry, I'll just... go..."

"No, please stay," the king hurries to say with a kind smile. "I will be busy for a few hours and it will be good to have someone here to watch the kids. Actually, could you come with me for a moment? You as well, Sans." He gives Gaster a stern look. "You wait here."

Gaster raises his hands in resignation. "Not like I can run anywhere you won't find me, anyways."

The white person named Blooky ‒ and they really are very white, white skin, white hair, very baggy white and gray clothes ‒ gives Sans an extremely reluctant wave that almost looks more like an involuntary twitch, and then awkwardly follows him and the king out of the room.

When they get to a hallway, Asgore gestures for them to wait and knocks at the first door to their left. "May I come in, Pumpkin?" It's silent for a few seconds, then there is a rustling on the other side of the door, followed by a very muted, very dragged out "Yeah." With a quick look over his shoulder and a small gesture likely meant to tell them to wait for a bit, Asgore slowly opens the door and slips into the room. More rustling and muffled voices can be heard, but it's too quiet to understand and Sans also has a feeling that he isn't supposed to listen.

He waits silently with Blooky, who for some reason gets more and more nervous, their eyes darting around the hallway in an almost panicky manner the longer the silence stretches between them. "Ooh no..." they finally whisper, pressing their hands to their face for a moment. "Oh, this is awkward. Uuh... I don't know what to say."

Oh. Sans blinks up at them and shrugs. "Okay," he says. "So we don't talk." And he really doesn't have a problem with that, right now. He's getting very tired. All the new things and the talking and Asgore confusing him are slowly covering up Penny's little lake of blood in his mind and he doesn't know if he's ready to stop thinking about that. It feels unfair, somehow. Like leaving her on the floor back in that hallway did.

To underline that he's okay with not interacting, Sans walks a few steps away and crouches down on the floor, leaning against the wall with half-lidded eyes.

Blooky frets for a little bit, lacing their fingers together and shuffling their feet. But after a short while, they sit down as well, leaving a large gap between themselves and Sans, and fiddle with their headphones. It doesn't take long after that for them to calm down, and soon both of them are sitting in comfortable silence, each dwelling on their own thoughts.

It feels... unusually peaceful. Like the silence turns into calming music somewhere along the way and the floor just quietly slips out under them, leaving them floating. This might be magic, Sans manages to think, before he realizes that he doesn't really care and just leans back to savor the feeling.

He is almost disappointed when the door opens up again after not even fifteen minutes and Asgore smiles at them before waving them inside. "I'm sorry for making you wait so long," he apologizes, patiently watching as they both slowly clamber back onto their feet, still a little lost in the previous silence. "Chara has agreed to let you stay in their room while I discuss any remaining concerns with Dr. Gaster." He looks down at Sans, furrowing his brow to make his face look very, very serious. "They are a human. Be nice to them and don't hurt them. Alright?"

"Okay," Sans says. He already agreed to that, after all.

Chara is sitting on the floor in front of a bed on the left side of the room. They watch quietly as Asgore, Sans and Blooky enter, looking a little apprehensive, but mostly just grumpy. "This is Sans," Asgore says, his heavy hand back on Sans' shoulder. "And Sans, this is my child Chara." He looks back and forth between them. "Play nice." Chara rolls their light brown eyes, but Sans is busy staring at the little red plastic thing in their hand to even pay attention to anything else. It looks like the pictures of cars that are in Alphys' books. They were drawn much bigger there, but still, apparently cars are real! Just like houses and dogs and all that. He wonders how many other things that he thought were made up have actually just been out of his sight all this time.

With the hand that's holding the tiny red car, Chara points to a thin black mattress on the floor next to the second bed on the right. The mattress is covered in a comfortable looking blanket and pillows. "You can sleep there," they tell him. "Not on the bed, that's Asriel's bed. And you can't play with his stuffed animals, either." They glance at their father, who is slowly backing out of the room but still watching through the open door. Then, self-consciously picking at their fingernails, they continue: "I guess you can have one of mine, if you want. A small one."

Well, Sans has no idea what a stuffed animal is, but it sounds like a very big deal, so he grins and nods. Though it's really hard to pay attention to anything other than the little car right now. Chara is slowly pulling it across the carpet in front of them, then lifting it into the air, moving it from one side to the other and then putting it back down. Sans carefully follows along with his eyes.

Only when he hears a very short, kind of breathless chuckle does he realize that Chara is doing that on purpose and he quickly looks away. But suddenly, while he's still trying very hard to control himself and not look, something lands on the floor by his feet and he jumps a little. "There," Chara says, "you can play with that one." It's another little car, a blue one, and even though it looks a bit older and worse for wear than Chara's red one, Sans claps his hands happily before picking it up, carefully keeping himself from jumping in place.

Very quietly, the door clicks shut and Blooky sits down on the floor next to it, tiredly watching over them.

Sans remembers Alphys explaining to him what playing is, but the only examples he really had were drawing and throwing a ball around. Chara isn't throwing their little car around, so that would obviously be the wrong approach. It's still a bit hard to figure out what exactly they're doing instead, maybe because they don't seem to really be into it. After dragging the car along the carpet for a while longer, occasionally making lackluster motor noises with their mouth, they suddenly just drop it into a little box to their right and lean back against the bed, blowing a stray strand of reddish hair out of their face.

After he is done thoroughly inspecting the blue car, Sans hesitantly inches a bit closer to where Chara is sitting, making eye contact every few seconds to see if they're fine with him coming closer. Their eyes follow him around attentively, but beyond that they're very hard to read. Once he gets within arm length of them, he slowly holds out the car to give it back.

Chara frowns at him. "You don't have to give it back yet. Just play without me."

With him not even knowing how to play and with the two other people in the room just silently watching, that might become just a tiny bit uncomfortable, Sans thinks. "No," he says, grinning when he gets an idea, and turns the car around so he can spin the little tires with his finger. "It's too tired."

Instead of doing a painful little groan, like Alphys and all the creators did and Blooky is doing now (albeit very quietly,) Chara looks at him with startled eyes for a moment, before snorting one loud, happy "Ha!" and proceeding to snicker into their hand.

Sans is grinning with insane pride, even as Chara snatches the car out of his hand and tries to glare at him. They fail miserably because they're still scrunching up their nose and mouth trying not to laugh. "Ha ha, you're such a comedian," they attempt to drawl sarcastically. But then they immediately drop the act and reach into the box with a wide grin. "Besides," they continue, as they hold up a little plastic motorcycle, " _this_ is the one that's two tired."

Sans giggles and claps his hands happily. Somewhere behind them, Blooky is covering their face with their wide sleeves and pretends to not exist.

With newly building enthusiasm, Chara drops the toys again and sits up on their knees, eagerly scooting forward a bit. "Knock knock."

It gets a little weird while Sans waits for them to continue and they look at him expectantly, but then they lean forward a little and whisper "You have to say 'Who's there?'" and he hastily complies. "Who's there?"

"Snow," they answer, and following their mumbled instructions, Sans continues with "Snow who?"

"Snow use, I forgot my name again!"

Sans looks at them, alarmed. "You did?" He knows how terrible that feels, after all. But Chara just smacks their forehead loudly and laments with pretended exasperation: "No, that's the joke!" With a groan and a giggle, they jump to their feet and drag Sans with them to the door. "Here, it's easier with an actual door."

Blooky scoots out of their way, but Chara doesn't even seem to register them as they jump into the hallway while Sans stays inside, leaving the door ajar only a bit between them. When they say "Knock knock" this time, they actually knock on the door as well.

"Who's there?"

"Adore."

Oh! Sans thinks he knows where this one is going. Smiling, he goes "Adore who?"

"Adore's between us, open up!" And Sans does so with a giggle, watching as Chara snickers at their own joke and nods at Sans, proud that he got it now. Then they quickly shut the door again and yell "Okay, now you start!"

"Knock knock," Sans says, rapping his knuckles on the door, but he only notices the problem when Chara triumphantly responds "Who's there," obviously holding back their laughter as Sans hectically tries to think of something to say. "Um, uuh... Spell!" he blurts out the first thing that comes to his mind.

"Spell who?"

"W ‒ H ‒ O." He nervously pinches one eye shut, waiting for the verdict, but luckily he doesn't have to worry for very long. Chara comes back into the room with a chuckle and a "Nice one."

Chara seems to be in a much better mood after all that. They do get tired of telling knock knock jokes after a while, but they also aren't looking as grumpy about the whole situation anymore. Sans is allowed to take a closer look at their toys, which they really have a lot of, and they try to teach him how to play with some of them. Though the whole concept remains a bit of a mystery to Sans; apparently one has to do the voices for the little figurines, move them about and make up a story for them, only that someone else is playing another character so that's a part of the story he has no control over and Sans isn't all that good at improvising, apparently. It's a lot to do all at once and Chara quickly realizes that it's not quite working out, so the 'action figures,' as they call them, are swiftly dropped and forgotten on the floor.

The books are great, though. There is a whole shelf full of them and they're all colorful and have pictures in them like the ones Alphys brings with her to the lab ‒ or used to bring, because the last few months it has mostly been about learning science from Freeda and while that's fun too, Sans did miss the other books a little bit. That's something Chara and him can spend a lot of time on, apparently, because Chara shows him one book after another, telling him what they're about and explaining what's good or bad about each one. "Asriel likes this one," is often their main argument for the ones they deem 'good.' This Asriel person must be very smart.

Sans even manages to surprise Chara with the fact that he can actually read all the books. They ask him something about his age and about going to school, but he doesn't understand, so they just proceed to present him with one book after another, gradually choosing more and more complicated ones with more text and fewer pictures, challenging him to read specific sentences.

Somehow, this leads to both of them sitting on Chara's bed together, Chara wrapped up in their blanket and Sans slowly reading out the thickest book they have with the most complicated story and the fewest pictures. He has to concentrate a lot and doesn't register everything of what he's reading, but the parts he does understand are really interesting, something about dragons and lots of magic. Though it seems to be about humans and the descriptions of their magic are very much unlike what Sans knows about them, which he makes sure to tell Chara so they don't learn wrong things. They just nod impatiently and gesture for him to keep reading.

That is how Asgore finds them when he comes back into the room a few hours later. Sans' voice is becoming hoarse after reading the first four chapters, but he only reluctantly stops to look up ‒ he kind of wants to know now if the princess will succeed in becoming the greatest dragon slayer of the universe.

Asgore chuckles when he sees them on the bed and very carefully walks over to them, stepping around the toys scattered throughout the room and slouching a bit so his horns don't scratch along the ceiling. Behind him, Gaster leans against the door frame, arms crossed and face schooled into an expressionless mask. Sans tries to make eye contact with him, but the creator is more interested in watching Chara, it appears.

When Asgore has to stop and look down on the floor to find a toyless path to the bed, Chara sticks their tongue out at Gaster.

Gaster immediately sticks his out, too.

"So," Asgore says, finally having reached the bed and slowly sitting down on the edge, making the whole mattress dip so that Sans almost loses his balance, "you two are getting along?" Both Chara and Gaster quickly hide their tongues away, then Chara glances at Sans and shrugs. "I guess," they say, looking away again and trailing a finger along the pattern of their blanket. Asgore chuckles and drops a light kiss on their head, which Chara rolls their eyes at but still inconspicuously leans into.

The king then turns to Sans with a gentle but serious expression. "Sans, I am infinitely sorry for leaving you in the laboratories for so long. I promise you will never have to go back there."

Sans blinks up at him with today's ever present feeling of confusion. "We'll do tests here?" he asks.

"No." Now Asgore's face is a big, unhappy frown again. "There will be no more tests."

Completely bewildered, Sans looks back and forth between Asgore and Gaster, trying to figure out what any of this means. "But I promised," he finally tells the king. "I have to help save monsterkind."

Gaster moves his hand in a big 'I told you so' gesture. "See? Even he knows it!"

After taking a moment to silence Gaster with a harsh glare, Asgore lays his hands on Sans' shoulders and scoots down so he can get an even better look of his face. "That is not your responsibility, small one. The doctor can find another way to solve this crisis. He is, after all," and he reproachfully glances back at Gaster out of the corner of his eyes, "a very smart man, as he is so fond of reminding people."

"There are motherf ‒ effing limits, as I've spent the last hours explaining to you." Gaster's mask is quickly slipping, he is still angry, but also getting very tired, it seems.

Sans doesn't know if it's because he himself is tired too, but his eyes are starting to itch and his throat is closing up. "I have to help," he says, his voice comes out all wobbly and weak, a bit higher than normal, and just the act of speaking is making his eyes feel wet. Behind him Chara is shifting around awkwardly as Asgore leans forward and scoops Sans up in a big, warm hug, stroking his back reassuringly. It doesn't help one bit with Sans' sudden desire to cry, so he tries to wriggle his way out of it at first. It's no use though. His lower lip is starting to quiver and he attempts to look over Asgore's shoulder at Gaster, but the creator is hidden from his view and that somehow makes everything worse.

"I, I ‒ I want to ‒ I have to," he stammers helplessly, his voice swaying up and down and becoming more and more unintelligible. "They n-need me, they h-have to, to, to _save_ ‒" He gives up with an exhausted breath when he realizes he can't produce proper sentences right now and intently wipes his eyes with the back of his hand. This is stupid, there isn't a single reason to cry, nothing even hurts right now. While he forcibly calms himself down, Asgore still doesn't let go of him and insists on rubbing little circles into his back, which is weirdly comforting but also counterproductive to Sans' goal of not being overly emotional.

"His is the only usable soul with human magic," Gaster says calmly and quietly. "The human souls themselves don't help me, I need a monster soul. If _somebody else_ had killed that human and absorbed part of its power, I'd have something else to work with now, but as it is, there's only Sans. With two kinds of human magic at once now, apparently. Remember how his bullets turned cyan right after he killed her? He has both blue and cyan magic now, that's something I need to frickin look into."

"You will find another way." It sounds absolutely final, the way Asgore says it. "There will be no more killing and no more experiments on children. Use normal monster magic to fix this." He reluctantly lets Sans go, who quickly scoots back a little and concentrates on staring at the blanket. Chara pokes him in the side and when he looks up, they're grumpily holding out a little stuffed bear towards him. After he just stares at it quizzically, they roll their eyes and softly throw it at his head.

By the door, Gaster rips the glasses from his nose and rubs his eyes, mumbling to himself indignantly. "Fix the monster magic problem with more monster magic, yeah that's brilliant, why the fuck didn't I think of that before?"

"Swear jar," Chara pipes up, actually grabbing a glass jar filled with gold coins and candy from their bedside table. The cap is glued on and only has a little slit cut into it.

Gaster stares at the jar, then at Asgore, who just raises an eyebrow as Chara demandingly rattles the jar. Gaster copies the raised eyebrow. "It's, what, one gold per swearword?" Asgore and Chara both nod with the same strict expression. "Alright, let's see..." He pushes himself off the door frame and marches up to them, rummaging through his pockets at the same time. "So that's one fucking coin for each fuck I don't fucking give," he calmly tells them as he drops one coin after another into the jar. "Fuck. This. Shit." He points at Chara with an utterly disgusted sneer on his face. "And fuck your jar!"

Chara's face lights up with every single coin clanking into the jar and by the end, their eyes are filled with tears from their efforts not to laugh. Asgore buries his face in his hands, knowing full well that it's too late to avert disaster, and just gets up to drag Gaster out of the room by his elbow when he is done.

Sans picked up the stuffed bear and holds it by its arms now, carefully sat in front of him on the mattress. The door falls shut and muffles the slowly receding sound of the two men continuing to squabble, though for just a moment it sounds almost playful instead of genuinely angry and annoyed as before. When it's quiet again, Sans carefully picks the toy up and tucks it under his arm. That's almost like Asgore's hug from before, but not quite as overwhelming, which is definitely a good thing. His eyes still itch a tiny bit, but other than that he's doing better now that the king and the creator are gone.

After a few moments, Chara stretches their naked foot out from under the blanket and pushes the book slowly towards Sans, very decidedly not looking at him directly. Relieved about the distraction, Sans opens it up again, the bear still safely secured under his arm, and picks up where he left off.

* * *

At some point, Gaster leaves without telling Sans. He's just suddenly gone when Asgore sends Blooky home and calls Sans and Chara into the dining room, and Sans has a little bit of a panic attack. One that nobody really notices at first, because he does it really quietly by standing still and having loud, obtrusive thoughts about being lost without his creator in a part of the world he doesn't know and without a way back to the labs. Asgore is talking to someone on the phone, Chara is putting plates and cutlery on the table and Sans is standing in the middle of the room, looking at nothing and clenching his fists at his side.

Only when Chara tries to talk to him but doesn't get any answers do they realize that something is wrong. It's all a blur from that point on. He seems to remember the two of them staying remarkably calm, just soothingly talking to him and mostly keeping their distance. When he finds back to himself, he is sat in one of the big armchairs by the fire, Chara kneeling on the floor in front of it and rambling something about rabbits, of all things, while Asgore is preparing the table and keeping an eye on them from over there.

Sans recalls how Blooky said something about Chara and anxiety in the beginning, so that probably explains why his own little bout of panic doesn't seem to be anything that out of the ordinary around here. The stuffed bear found its way back into his arms and he very gladly holds onto it a bit tighter while listening to Chara's attempts at distraction. They have a lot to say about rabbits, apparently.

"I'm sorry," Asgore starts his explanation once they're all sat at the table. "But Dr. Gaster cannot take care of you anymore. He will be focusing on his research now and you will stay here."

Sans stares down at his empty plate, all out of energy for any real protest. He feels exhausted.

Asgore's deep sigh suggests that he isn't doing any better. "And I'll have to find a new Royal Scientist" he mumbles to himself as he fills everyone's plates. "Nobody will want the job now."

"Why not?" Chara asks, lazily poking their fork at the food ‒ 'snail salad' they told Sans with a grimace ‒ and taking tiny bites. Asgore waves it off. "Ah, that is not very interesting to you children," he smiles gently, but Chara is definitely more interested in his troubles than in the food. "So he's not the Royal Scientist anymore, but you're still letting him do research?" they ask almost accusingly.

Asgore sighs another heavy sigh. "Under observation, yes. He is sadly the most capable scientist we have, so I can't remove him from the project completely. But he'll have much fewer privileges now and no longer any power to do whatever he wants."

Grinning, Chara bites into a green, crunchy leaf and starts drumming their fingers on the table. "How angry was he about that?"

"Please stop being amused by conflict," Asgore says, but with a small smile and a teasing tone. "And he actually took it very well. Said he doesn't need a fancy title to do science. Then he laughed at me for five minutes for having to choose someone else to fill the role now."

"Gaster is the best scientist," Sans murmurs, hands stuck under his thighs on the chair and not even looking at his food. "The Royal Scientist has to be the best."

"Hm." Asgore's hum is deep and contemplating. "It's not that simple, sometimes. It's not only a matter of science, but also politics and, in this case, disciplinary actions for ‒ deviant behaviour." With a quick shake of his head, he tries to close the subject. "Like I said, it's all very dry and boring, you two don't want to hear about that. Now Sans, I have spoken to my wife on the phone to tell her about you and she is very happy to have you with us. You can meet her and my son when they come home in a few days. She wishes to know if you prefer cinnamon or butterscotch?"

Sans' answer is an empty stare, which doesn't appear to surprise Asgore at all. "That's what I expected, actually," he chuckles. "Don't worry, it's not all that important."

Chara rolls their eyes. "Yeah, she'll just use both anyway."

"Do you have a favorite food?" Asgore keeps asking. "Oh, and she would also like to know your favorite color and your dress size ‒" He falters for a moment and then rubs his beard with a slightly embarrassed smile, "‒ which you don't know, of course. Ah, I'm sorry for overwhelming you. We will figure this all out later. For now, why don't you try eating something? Just a little bit?"

Just thinking about food turns Sans' stomach around at the moment. For a few seconds, he debates with himself whether or not to risk it anyways, but there are images of Penny's blood in his mind that won't go away and try as he might, Sans can't turn it around to something as trivial as hunger. He shakes his head and pushes the plate away from himself, not even caring about disobeying orders.

Nothing happens. Sure, there is another tiny sigh from Asgore, but beyond that, this odd meeting just continues as it did before, with Chara poking listlessly at their food and Asgore trying to make child-friendly conversation. He even seems to be making sure not to address Sans again, even though it looks like he sometimes thinks of yet another thing he wants to ask. When that happens, he just carefully writes something down on a little notepad lying next to him on the table, smiles at Sans and goes back to talking to Chara about school.

After the meal they clear the table together and Sans pulls himself out of his strangely numb state of mind long enough to help. Just because Gaster isn't here anymore doesn't mean he should slack off and stop trying to be useful, after all. When everything is cleaned up, Asgore picks out an oversized shirt for Sans to sleep in and has a quick argument with Chara who claims to not be tired at all, even though they keep yawning throughout their attempts at protesting. By the time they finally comply and start changing into their pajamas, Sans has already tucked himself into bed, the cozy blanket pulled up far over his head.

He almost manages to block everything else out like this, Chara's and Asgore's continued conversation, their rustling about, Asgore's short reading of another chapter from the dragon book. Everything is too different from the lab, it's all muddled with warmth and gentleness and Sans can't understand the point of it all. Gaster was trying to save monsterkind and everything that Sans did served that purpose. He has no idea what Asgore is trying to do, or what Chara's and his purpose here is.

He has no idea why, when the lights are turned off and Asgore whispers "Good night" to both of them with the kindest voice, it makes his chest constrict almost painfully.

It's really warm, but he's still shaking a little under his blanket, listening to Chara turning around in their bed and breathing quietly. With the lights off and all other sounds gone, every little noise seems so much louder than it really is and it's suddenly impossible to keep shutting it all out, even if he wraps his entire head in the blanket and presses his hands over his ears. It just gets too stuffy after a while and he has to at least poke his nose out of the warm cocoon he made himself.

For a long while, everything is silent, but probably too silent for Chara to be asleep already, Sans thinks. It turns out he is right, because slowly, the rustling starts up again and then Chara whispers: "It's weird, right?" It sounds like they're sitting up and Sans is pretty sure they're looking in his direction. "People being nice to you?"

Sans buries himself deeper in the blankets again. Chara snuffles a bit. "I thought it was weird at first. And sometimes I'm still, y'know... waiting for the other shoe to drop, or something." Reluctantly, Sans opens his eyes and peers at them from behind his wall of coziness. They shrug and scratch their cheek. "Funniest thing is, this is how it's supposed to be, apparently. So, all the shit people did to you before? Yeah, that was all wrong." With another shrug, they let themselves fall back into the pillows. "Dunno, just thought I'd tell you. Make it easier to figure it all out, or whatever."

They stare at the ceiling and Sans stares at them. It feels like they know what they're talking about, but they probably don't know how important Gaster's work is. Or how Sans' soul is all wrong and defective, so he has to be treated differently than other, normal people. He doesn't have the energy to explain it right now.

Heavy footsteps pass by their room and Chara listens intently. As soon as they're gone and the lights in the hallway are turned off, they turn on their side, head propped up on their hand. "So," they start whispering again, "You killed a human, huh? Dad told me."

For some reason, even though Sans hasn't once stopped thinking about this ever since it happened, the words make him physically recoil as if in shock. Still, he nods slowly.

"Did they deserve it?"

And there it is. The thing that has secretly been bothering him about all this, laid out in the open with just one small question. Sans knows he had to do it. Sans knows that Gaster would have died otherwise. He knows that killing humans is important for their research.

He also knows that she deserved to live.

It's a disturbing feeling to cry for no concrete reason. Tears only ever came to him because he was in pain, not because of something as silly as being sad. Maybe when he cried with _her_ , when she died, but that was because he was dying with her.

Penny died without him. He didn't feel her slip away. Her soul is even still there, somewhere, in it's tiny glass container. But he thinks about it and small, silent sobs make their way out of his throat, little hiccups following behind. He presses his face into the pillow to stop it, to stop his breath and force himself to concentrate on something else, on some actual pain.

"Ey!" Chara raps their knuckles on the back of his head lightly, then grabs his ears and pulls his face back up. When did they even get out of their bed?

They shove him around a bit so he's lying on his side and Sans curls up as far as he can, hiding his face in his knees instead. Apparently Chara won't let him try to suffocate the tears away, so he just has to wait for it pass by itself and make it as quiet as he can. Penny cried very loudly, he remembers. Luckily it's just small whimpers and sniffling in his case, maybe because it's just really hard to catch enough breath to produce an actual sound.

Chara stays there next to him on his mattress, fingers intertwined in front of their chest. They seem a little nervous and unsure about what to do, but after a while, when he still hasn't calmed down, they turn back to their own bed quickly and then press a giant teddy bear to his chest. It's about three times bigger than the one they gave him before and definitely ten times as fluffy. Sans almost automatically wraps his arms around it and holds onto it tightly, sniffling into its white fur and kneading the plush with his hands.

"That's only for tonight," Chara warns him, looking away uncomfortably. "I want her back tomorrow! Her name is Strawbeary." They fiddle with one corner of his blanket for a bit. "You know, beary? As in bear?" A small sigh. "It works better in writing."

Listening to them talk really makes it a bit easier to calm himself down again, Sans thinks. Or maybe that's just the effect of holding Strawbeary in his arms. He carefully pets her fur, very grateful about being allowed to hold her now that he knows how important she is. It would probably be nice to say something about that, a 'thank you' at least, but he doesn't trust his voice while the hiccups are still plaguing him.

Chara doesn't seem to mind his silence on the matter. They sit with him for a bit longer, before yawning loudly and slowly crawling back into their own bed. "Good night," they mumble very tiredly. Shortly after that, their breathing becomes deep and even as they fall asleep.

Sans doesn't sleep that night. The low sounds of occasionally cracking wood around him turn into cracking bones in his ear and the wet tears on his face feel red in the darkness. It's a pointless thing to linger on, but there's nobody here to chastise him or to call him stupid for being hung up on something so silly. So just for tonight, he indulges in this weird, misplaced regret.

This way, maybe he won't ever have to think about it again after tonight. He'll try his best, at least.

* * *

True to his silent nightly decision, Sans makes sure to not be this useless anymore come the next day. The easiest way to do that, it turns out, is to follow Asgore around and help him with things: carrying the plates from the kitchen to the table in the morning, handing him the few things he needs while cooking something called 'breakfast,' clearing the table again afterwards, putting the toys away that Sans and Chara left on the floor the day before, and finally following him into the garden and ripping out weeds. The hardest thing is distinguishing those from the actual flowers, because most are "not in bloom yet," whatever that means, and almost everything is the same shade of green.

It's hard to stay focused in the garden. The very few blossoms he can see already may not look exactly like the blue, whispering flowers that _she_ dreamed of, but they're similar enough to make Sans a little sad. The colors are pretty, though. He has to get real close and look past the green leaves to find them, but then there are tiny spots of red and pink and white scattered around.

Asgore seems very happy that he gets to talk to Sans about flowers. He tells him all the different names and how this little patch of green is the only place in the underground where normal flowers can actually bloom, because they get the tiniest bit of sunlight that's shining through the barrier in the other room. Sans stares at the archway behind the two big, golden chairs in the middle of the room. The light falling through that gate is bright and yellow and when he gets a little closer, it actually feels warm.

As Sans reluctantly turns away from the light again, the king has rolled up his pant legs, taken off his socks and is sat a bit behind Sans in the grass, face turned towards the light and a blissful expression on his face. When he sees Sans watching him quizzically, he waves him over and pats the grass next to him. Sans decides that if the king is doing this, then there must be a point to it, so he also gets rid of his socks, pulls his pant legs up over his knees and carefully walks over the grass that he has avoided stepping on up to this point. He needs to stop after only a few steps, staring down at his feet and curling his toes, curiously soaking in the feeling of tickling, but strangely soft blades of grass bending under his feet.

The greater part of the day, which he had intended to be a productive one, trickles past them as they sit in the garden, facing the sunlight and later on watering the flowers and picking weeds. It doesn't make Sans feel like much was achieved at all, but he tries to reassure himself that he just did what the king wanted him to do.

He even eats a little bit of dinner afterwards and is almost overwhelmed by the sudden taste, which is nothing like the bland astronaut food he got in the lab. The things on his plate have colors and textures, they're so hot he has to blow on them before eating them, and it's a huge collection of different kinds of things. For a short moment after his first bite, he becomes so excited he can barely speak, patting his hands on the tabletop and resorting to signing his question of "What is that?" Chara looks at him with one raised eyebrow and an expression like they think he's a bit insane. "It's just canned veggies, dude." Asgore scribbles something down on his notepad, but Chara rolls their eyes at him. "It can't be his favorite food, he's never even had sweets before. Right?" But Sans is too engrossed in exploring the taste of every single colorful, round or diced piece of vegetable, that he doesn't pay attention to the conversation at all.

It's still too big a portion to finish it all, which he finds almost sad. Still, he helps clearing the table again and then washing the dishes ‒ though he has a feeling Asgore is patronizing him a bit by only letting him dry off a few plastic cups and doing most of the work himself when he thinks Sans isn't looking.

After not getting any sleep last night, it's maybe not surprising that Sans nods off at the small kitchen table, but he's still a bit embarrassed when he wakes up in his bed the next day and realizes he must have skipped out on a lot of work by falling asleep so early. Today will be better, he tells himself resolutely.

But today is not better. He is told not to worry about helping out and to play with Chara instead. They try to get him into the thing with the action figures again, but he still doesn't understand it and all too often, they need to tell him exactly what to do and Sans starts sweating, thinking that he is failing this task miserably. In the end, Chara barely even notices when he retreats from the game more and more until they're playing all by themselves, with Sans sitting on his mattress and watching.

Then, with a sudden start, Sans realizes that he completely forgot about Pollard being sick and that he still doesn't know how he's doing or if Alphys got punished for freeing the human and if he'll ever see her again. From one second to another he gets so worked up that he almost cries again, but instead his voice just hitches higher and higher as he runs for Asgore, almost screaming the questions at him. Instead of answers, he just gets a hug and this time, he really isn't in the mood for it. His kicks barely even touch the king, but he still lets him go quickly and then keeps his distance as he waits for him to calm down.

Asgore makes some phone calls. It doesn't take very long, but when he informs Sans that Pollard is in the hospital, mostly stable for now, and that Alphys is fine but likely won't be allowed into the lab again, it's still hugely unsatisfying. Only after Asgore promises him that Alphys will be visiting him here and that they can go see Pollard when he's doing better does Sans slowly stop complaining.

He's still angry with himself for even forgetting about those two. How selfish of him. For the rest of the day, Sans retreats into Chara's room, curled up on his mattress and reading a science book that he kept demanding until he finally got one. It's too easy for him, but doing this still feels better than pointlessly carrying plates from the kitchen to the table and back again or watering flowers and looking at the sun. Chara seems very annoyed with him, but in the evening he agrees to reading to them again and that placates them a bit.

Very slowly, they find a routine over the course of the next few days. Sans gets to help out with the dishes and with cleaning up, then he goes to the garden for about two hours every day. After lunch, him and Chara have to play. They look at books together or tell jokes. Once, they try to play catch, but Sans is out of breath too quickly and Chara deems it "no fun." If Chara wants to play with action figures, Sans gets papers and colorful pens to draw with instead, which he likes. Sometimes, Chara even joins him and they draw together, those are the best times.

After dinner, he has some time to look at school books, which are not all about science, surprisingly, but also about language and art and politics. It's interesting, but science is still better. Then, after his way too short study session, they both get cleaned up ‒ with warm water! ‒ and dressed for bed, where Asgore reads them another few pages of the dragon book before turning off the lights.

Most nights, Chara falls asleep very quickly and Sans lies awake for a little while. It's odd to get used to this kind of slow, unchallenging pace. Nobody seems to really expect anything from him anymore, there's no real training, no real studying, no experiments at all. He catches himself being glad about not being in pain, feeling a strange wave of relief wash over him with every day that passes uneventfully. Part of him thinks this is building up to something, constantly expecting "the other shoe to drop," as Chara said it.

Another part of him, one that's slowly becoming louder and more and more confident, thinks that this is it, this is how real people actually live.

That maybe, just maybe, he had a little bit of luck and he'll be allowed to pretend he's a real person, too.

He thinks he might be alright with that.

* * *

Sans wakes up with a start when a cold hand is pressed on his mouth.

Trying to suck in a panicked breath, he chokes instead and clambers hectically for the arm holding him down, pointlessly tearing at it and not managing to move it even an inch. A deep shadow looms over him, someone kneeling right next to him, and he starts trembling in fear when he realizes it's not a wide enough shadow to be Asgore and not small enough to be Chara. He feels his magic surge up on instinct.

"Sans," the shadow whispers, leaning closer ‒ and Sans stops struggling.

Gaster stares into his eyes warningly, raises his other hand and presses a single finger to his lips. Sans stares back, breathing harshly through his nose, his hands still clasped around Gaster's wrist, but he doesn't try to rip it off of him anymore. His soul still pulsing erratically in his chest, ready to cast its blue magic, he slowly forces himself to calm down and nod in understanding. He'll be quiet.

The hand lifts up carefully and Sans can see tension run through his creator's shoulders, as if he's waiting for him to break the silence with screams and panic. But Sans stays silent, staring up at Gaster with equal parts dread and relief. After a few seconds, Gaster's shoulders drop with a sigh and he leans back a little on his heels. With slow, exaggerated motions to compensate for the darkness, he signs for Sans to come with him and then stands up, silently retreating back out of the room.

Sans looks over at Chara. They're still fast asleep, breathing evenly with tiny little snores escaping every once in a while. The lights in the hallway are turned off, so not even the open door brightens up the room. As slowly and quietly as he can, Sans slips out of bed and tiptoes out of the room. He doesn't want to risk making any noise by moving the door handle, so he doesn't entirely close the door behind him.

He looks up and down the hallway and even though he was expecting it, he jumps a little when he sees Gaster standing by the front door, quietly waiting for him in the dark as a tall, black silhouette. As soon as Sans moves towards him, he opens the door and steps outside, holding it open for Sans.

It's really cold and Sans immediately starts shivering as he leaves the house in just his oversized shirt. Gaster leads him around the corner where there are no windows and they're hidden in the shadows. He crouches down to Sans' level and smiles. "How are you doing, buddy?"

Instead of answering, Sans stands up on his tiptoes and puts his arms around Gaster's neck, hugging him as best he can from this angle.

"Uh." Gaster shuffles down to his knees to make the position less awkward, then hesitantly holds onto Sans and pats his back lightly. "That happens when you live with Asgore for too long, alright," he mumbles, and Sans supposes he's indeed right. It didn't take long for him to get used to the king's constant hugs and just reassuring touches in general. Maybe this is a bit uncalled for then, but he's just honestly glad to see Gaster again after he had almost accepted already that he never might.

After just a few seconds, Gaster loosens his arms and scoots away so they can look at each other. Sans feels a bit bad about hugging him now, that was obviously inappropriate, so he hides his hands behind his back and grins up at him expectantly instead.

"It's nice here, right?" Gaster asks, pointing his chin in the direction of the house. "I bet you're having a blast living with them."

Sans shuffles his feet. He doesn't know about having a blast, exactly, but it _is_ nice. Somehow though, it doesn't feel right to tell Gaster that, so he just shrugs.

Gaster scoffs loudly. "Nice try, kid." With a sigh, he moves around for a bit, sorting out his long legs until he is mostly crouching again, one knee on the ground and his elbow leaning on the other one. He tugs his glasses from his face and rubs the bridge of his nose with two fingers.

He looks ‒ Sans doesn't know. If it was Asgore, Sans would have thought he looked sad, but he's not sure if Gaster is even capable of being sad. He settles on tired instead, but it doesn't feel like enough.

The glasses stay in Gaster's hand and he waves them through the air in a small, unenthusiastic gesture. "I'm going to cut the crap," he starts, and coming from him it sounds almost like a threat. "You'd probably be happy here. People will treat you nice, you'll grow up as one of them, with friends and family, all that. I can't deny that has a certain appeal." He bends his head down even lower and stares right into Sans' eyes. "But if you're being honest with yourself ‒ do you really believe you deserve that?"

It's an easy question and Sans doesn't have to hesitate at all before shaking his head.

Now, for just a split second, Gaster definitely looks sad. Then he puts the glasses back on, straightens up a tiny bit, and it's all gone in an instant.

"As we probably both know by this point," he launches into his speech, "I know jack shit about raising kids. Or rather, it's just that I don't care enough to try and do it right. I'm not going to read you bedtime stories and fucking kiss you goodnight, I'm not going to bury you under piles of toys and teddy bears. What I _can_ give you, is exactly two things." He raises two fingers, pointing to the first one. "A choice." He points to the other. "And a purpose."

His hands fall back to his side and his voice dips lower, back to its almost gentle tone that, before Asgore, always sounded like the epitome of kindness to Sans. "I'm not pretending I always did right by you, but I always gave you a choice. I didn't order you to make a promise, I asked you if you wanted to. This is the choice I'm giving you now: I can relieve you of your promise. No judging, no strings attached at all. I'll leave you here, I won't ever come back again, and you can stay and live a good life. Or you keep your promise, you come with me and you will help me do something worthwhile."

He lets a short moment pass to let the words settle in. Then, with a strained little groan, he gets back on his feet, brushes the dirt from his knees and raises his shoulders. "It's up to you, kid." With that, he walks past him and slowly starts on the path leading away from New Home.

Sans is ashamed to admit that he almost considers staying. It's barely even a second, just one passing, fleeting moment where he longs for all the things he can't have. After almost a week living with warmth and kindness all around him, it's so much harder than it should be to remember what he is. Where he belongs.

Gaster has not even taken a full five steps before Sans catches up to him. In one last, shameful bout of egotism, Sans reaches out for his hand and holds onto it as they walk.

In one last bout of kindness, Gaster lets him.


	10. Belly of the Whale

**Belly of the Whale**

When Asgore carried him all the way from the CORE facility to New Home, Sans didn't pay much attention to their surroundings. Now that they are backtracking and he has a second chance to look around, he finds that he doesn't regret that much. There are empty, gray corridors all around them that seem to stretch on endlessly, and while it isn't as creepy as the hallways between the labs can get sometimes, it still has a very unsettling feel to it all. Like it's too empty, too quiet.

The view from high above of an endless sea of houses with flickering lights behind the windows doesn't help putting him at ease either. He was excited about seeing the one house, he didn't know there were that many. He didn't even know there could be so much space. Where are the walls? The ceiling? Where does all this open space end? Sans has to force himself to look away from it, to concentrate on the floor beneath his feet and hold onto Gaster's hand a little bit tighter. It's an irrational thought, but he feels that if he lets go, he'll just be sucked into all that air with nothing to stop him from just floating away into a big, empty nothing.

He is relieved beyond reason when they leave the gray walkways and return to the CORE.

Gaster is busy on his phone, like he has been during the entire walk, typing a giant avalanche of text. Sans can't imagine that it's actually for the sake of communicating with someone, his expression is too focused and not annoyed enough for that.

When Gaster notices Sans watching him, he looks down on him with a thoughtful face, the fingers still wrapped around Sans' hand twitching almost unnoticeably. "Ugh, alright," he finally mumbles, coming to a decision, and turns the phone around to show him a long wall of text that has hardly any resemblance to actual words anymore. Sans recognizes the pattern from some monitors in the lab and thinks it's called 'code.' "I'm hacking the cameras," Gaster explains as he goes back to typing. "You're a smart kid, right, you already know I wasn't supposed to take you with me."

Sometimes he says Sans is stupid and sometimes he says he's smart. One of these possibilities is infinitely easier for Sans to believe than the other.

"So I have to make sure no one can look at the footage and figure out where we went. Asgore's going to throw a hissy fit when he sees you're gone, and of course he'll know it was me, so I'm making it as difficult as possible for him to hunt me down."

Sans slows down a bit at that and almost looks back over his shoulder, even though the little house with the sweet smelling air and the kind people is long gone. "My choice," he says quietly. "I can tell him."

With an almost desperate snorting laugh, Gaster just proceeds to drag him along faster than before. "Nope, not gonna happen." He drops Sans' hand and holds onto his neck instead, pushing him down the hallway with a bit more force than strictly necessary. His other hand puts the phone back in his pocket and then harshly rubs his eyes under his glasses. "I'm signing about ten different death warrants for myself right now ‒ actually, make that a hundred for when the queen hears of this. Yeah, not a good foundation for calmly talking things out, not even with Asgore."

Sans remembers Gaster being a bit different than usual, a bit more tense after the fight with the human and he'd thought that was just because he'd lost so much HP and he would quickly be his old self again. But now it's a week later and Gaster's hand on his neck is twitching nervously, there is a sheen of sweat on his forehead and he looks so, so tired. Uncertainly biting his lower lip, Sans reaches up to him, tugging lightly at the hem of his sweater. When Gaster looks at him with a raised eyebrow, Sans pats his own chest where the wide collar of the oversized shirt is revealing part of his transparent skin. "Soul still hurts?"

Gaster frowns at him. "Yours or mine? Possessive pronouns buddy, use them."

And that sounds a bit more like him again, so Sans smiles as he carefully corrects himself: "Does your soul still hurt?"

"Nah." Gaster looks away, scratching the back of his head a bit uncomfortably. "Not more than usual." It's silent for a short moment, before Gaster starts as if he forgot something and hurries to ask: "What about yours? Anything unusual?"

Sans goes back to patting his chest, slowly and thoughtfully. His soul has actually been very quiet since ‒ since the thing that he isn't thinking about anymore. It's not that it normally hurts all the time, but he can definitely feel it in a certain way, like a pulled muscle. Now, even when he concentrates on it, there is barely anything at all. Not even its steady pulsing, which he can always feel, is all that pronounced anymore. He looks at Gaster with curiously widened eyes. "It's sleeping!"

"Very poetic," Gaster says with a grin and a shake of his head, "but not a very useful description from a scientific standpoint. What, is your soul lying in a little bed with a tiny pillow and blanket?" He provocatively gestures with his hands now, both amused and a little bit outraged at the useless statement, and Sans' grin widens. "Is it wearing a miniature pajama and a nightcap? Does it snore?" He flicks Sans' ear lightly when he doesn't stop giggling. "'It's sleeping.' Fucking brilliant. Gonna put that down in my report, 'Project SA-N5 soul status: asleep. Tuck in and do not disturb.'"

Then a sudden thought seems to hit him and he stops for a second, staring at Sans with a kind of surprised smile. "Holy shit. I just realized. I never have to write official reports again." A laugh bubbles out of him and he pumps a fist into the air. Sans doesn't understand why he's happy, but he laughs along anyway, relieved that the tired look is gone for now. "Oh my God," Gaster wheezes, a hand pressed to his eyes under his glasses. "No more explaining science to royal idiots. No more wanting to hit my past self in the face whenever I read my own notes. I can just, I can just write whatever the fuck I want!" His laugh still keeps going, but Sans is furrowing his brow now, a tiny bit worried as it starts sounding more crazy than usual.

Gaster holds onto Sans' shoulder as he stops to catch his breath for a second, still smiling, his hands shaking a little. "I can just," he starts slowly, his grin growing to reveal his slightly sharpened canines, " _do_ whatever the fuck I want."

With a shake of his head and a last disbelieving giggle, he stands up again and straightens his glasses. "Why did I even want to be Royal Scientist in the first place?" he asks no one in particular as he keeps walking briskly and Sans has to hurry after him. "It's just rules and regulations and bureaucracy."

"But," Sans starts up and Gaster looks almost startled for a second, as if he forgot Sans was even there, "you already always did whatever you wanted?"

"Well, yes." Gaster fumbles with his coat sleeves and clears his throat, finally done with the crazy laughing and giggling. "But I had to worry about explaining it afterwards or hiding things or just ‒ ugh, talking to people to make them agree to what I wanted to do. In the end, royal sanction and resources are not worth the time and effort that goes into pretending to play by the rules."

He stops before rounding the next corner, going back to his code on the phone, then waves for Sans to keep following him after a few short moments. They proceed in silence after that, Gaster back to concentrating on hacking the right cameras at the right moment and Sans paying close attention to always stay behind him and not accidentally wander into the line of sight of an unhacked camera.

They can't use the elevators, Gaster explains, as they have complicated activation protocols that would take a long time to hack, so they stick to the stairs and to hacking the security doors to the staircases, which is a bit easier and faster, apparently. The way down is long and Sans isn't very good with stairs; he's a bit too small to just walk down as Gaster does it, so he has to crouch on his hands and knees and climb each step down backwards. It takes forever and Gaster loses his patience after only six steps, scoops Sans up and carries him the rest of the way on his shoulders. It takes a bit of floundering before Sans finds a decent way to hold on, because apparently pulling on Gaster's ears is a no-go, as his hands get slapped away when he tries. He just wraps his arms around Gaster's head instead, interlacing his fingers with each other on his forehead.

The place is mostly empty, it's the middle of the night after all, but every once in a while they still have to slip into an unused room or hide behind a corner when a guard on night shift or some scientists absorbed in their research walk by. Sans does begin to wonder where they're even going. Even though he's sure the creator has a plan, it seems weird to him to return to the labs when they're supposed to be hiding. Surely this would be the first place Asgore would search for them? He wouldn't even have to search, actually, since the other scientists living and working here would just see them and tell him right away.

But then, for some reason, Sans thinks back to the dragon book he read to Chara and how the princess, at one point, outsmarted the biggest and baddest dragon by standing right in front of its nose, where it had a blind spot and couldn't see her as she drove her sword straight into its throat.

When they enter a labyrinth of white corridors that Sans has never seen before and Gaster stops being all that careful, Sans taps his forehead to get his attention. "Are we hiding in a blind spot?"

Gaster actually chuckles a bit. "Now how come you're asking more intelligent questions than most of the pseudo scientists in this building ever would?" He stops to let Sans down from his shoulders and puts his phone away. A lot more relaxed now than before, he waves Sans along and they stroll through the slowly broadening hallway. Blue and red lights blink at them from monitors and shiny panels all over the walls and thick, shiny pipelines are installed above them on the ceiling. The typical, constant droning sound of the CORE gets louder the further they go, practically vibrating in Sans' bones at some point and almost canceling out all other sounds. The temperature is steadily rising as well and now Sans is kind of glad that he's only wearing his thin t-shirt.

Though for just a second, he remembers that he left his pink sneakers back at Asgore's and he gets a tiny bit sad.

"This is what this whole facility is about," Gaster explains, watching his surroundings with a strange expression of pride in his eyes. "The Core. The actual construct that keeps the entire Underground in working order, that is, not the CORE facility that houses it. That one's just an acronym for Core Operation and Research Enterprise. Bit forced, maybe, but Asgore really, really wanted to name it that."

When the next set of heavy, metallic security doors slides open, Sans has to stop in his tracks and squint at the harsh orange glow that suddenly assaults his eyes. He is staring into a wide, round hall in sterile white and gray, except for the thick, translucent walls on all sides that reveal a slowly moving stream of fiery liquid all around them. It's like he's standing in a small little capsule that's sitting in the middle of a lake of fire.

Beyond the glass walls, metal walkways and platforms are built like a spider's web over the lake, most of them inside their own little transparent tubes and spanning over too many stories to count. It's a construct so enormous that Sans can barely even see the point every single one of the walkways leads towards; from here, he can only make out the lower third of a white sphere far, far in the distance, seemingly floating above the boiling sea of fire, vibrating and puffing out clouds of white steam. A complicated geometric net of lines covers its surface, a series of thin looking cracks that emit a pulsing, blue glow in time with the steam.

If Sans didn't like all that space surrounding the road to New Home, then this is about ten times worse. He holds onto the door frame, legs trembling under him as he tries to concentrate on the solid walls of the hallway behind him, but his brain oh-so-helpfully informs him of the fact that no, they're not actually as solid as he thinks and if they were see-through, he'd have the exact same view of a burning ocean from there as he has from right here.

He feels smaller and smaller the longer he looks. It makes him dizzy just trying to wrap his mind around the size of everything, around the fact that those tubes with the walkways are obviously big enough for people to walk through them, but in the distance they're barely more than thin lines to his eyes, hardly even visible anymore where they connect to the floating sphere. How that blue glowing network on its shining, reflective surface looks delicate and fragile from here, even though each line is probably at least ten times as wide as Sans if he were to walk all the way up to it.

Gaster takes hold of his shoulders from behind and almost gently pushes him into the round hall, the hall that's almost as big as the laboratory that Sans spent most of his life in, the hall that is nothing but a tiny speck of dust compared to the globe sitting on the other side of its walls. The doors slide shut behind them and Gaster unforgivingly walks him all the way up to the glass, until he could press his nose against it if he just leaned forward a few inches.

The creator actually does press a hand to the glass, a somewhat wistful expression on his face, similar to Asgore's smile when he said "Good night" and kissed the top of Chara's head. "It's running on Sleep Mode right now," he murmurs, his eyes only shortly flickering in Sans' direction before going back to the shining sphere. "You should see it during winter, or when it counteracts the seismic waves of the volcano. A hundred times better than any Christmas lights. Oh, I'll show you the blueprints when we're inside! Best damn thing I ever wrote." He snorts a derogatory laugh and shakes his head, snapping a finger against the glass. "Who in their right mind fires the guy who built that?"

Sans swallows hard. "We go inside?" he repeats hoarsely.

It seems to snap Gaster out of his musings, as he swivels around on the heels of his shoes and walks off to the other side of the hall, over to some white panels in the wall. "Yep," he announces proudly, typing a code into a keypad that has the panels sliding open with a little _whoosh_ sound, revealing a kind of cupboard that he now pulls two white suits and helmets out of. "See, that's the beauty of commanding the construction of something that nobody but you fully understands: You can build in all the secrets you could possibly want."

Gaster first helps Sans into the small suit that's still a little too big for him. It was probably made for someone of Freeda's statue ‒ or maybe even specifically for Freeda, Sans thinks. Putting it on correctly is a lot more complicated than Sans is used to from other clothes; it has valves and buttons, cables and tubes, and everything has to be connected in a certain way. There are metal plates in the shoulders and around the neck and the boots that come with it are so heavy that Sans feels practically glued to the floor. He hasn't even put the entire thing on when he's already sweating profusely.

It gets a bit better when Gaster adds the helmet. He has to fiddle around with it for a while, turn some valves and connect some tubes while Sans makes the glass front fog over with his breath. But then, with a little rushing of air, Gaster presses the last few buttons and the glass clears, the air around Sans' face cooling down immediately. It also gains a slightly metallic taste, but that isn't as bad as the heat, Sans decides.

"A thousand different people worked on this," Gaster resumes his explanation while putting on his own suit. "All commandeered by me and most of them not even scientists, but simple construction workers. I was the only one who even had the complete blueprints, everyone else just got a tiny part of the project that they were in charge of. If no one knows what the bigger picture looks like, no one notices all the little things you smuggle in that aren't even supposed to be there. And lots of little things put together add up to one really amazing big thing." He chuckles happily as he slides his helmet into place, obviously still proud of himself for fooling everyone.

It's extremely weird to see Gaster stomping around with those giant metal boots, but Sans doesn't have much time to watch as he has to fight the weight of his own suit to even move over to him where he's opening up the doors. There is a little white chamber on the other side, completely empty it seems, and once Sans makes it there he slumps down in relief a little bit. He'll have to leave the chamber again, of course, but for the moment he's just happy he can't see the Core anymore.

Then Gaster presses another set of buttons and a loud rushing of air sounds from all around them. "Decontamination," Gaster explains, his voice a little tinny over the speakers in his helmet. "It's a highly controlled environment in there, we have to make sure nothing volatile gets in or out."

"Even air?" Sans asks, huffing a little under the strain of his suit. He really hopes he won't have to wear it for too long, his muscles are screaming already from the effort of just standing upright.

"Air is never just air, kid. There are chemicals, particles, dust, skin flakes, all that jazz. And in there we have a heavy dose of radiation on top of it. That's what the suits are for, to protect us from radiation and extreme temperatures. It can get a little hot in there, what with all the lava." When the rushing of air around them dies down, he stomps over to Sans and holds him up by the upper arm. "Come on, it's just a short trip."

Sans frowns up at him doubtfully. If they're going to that pulsing white sphere ‒ which, if he understood this right, is the actual Core ‒ then it's much more than just a short trip. For obvious reasons he isn't very good with judging distances and the time it takes to travel them, but he just has to look at it and he knows that Laboratory 1, the largest of the labs, could easily fit at least a hundred times into the area beyond their little chamber.

Gaster apparently notices his skepticism, for he grins down at him with that expression he wears when he knows so much more than the person he's looking at right now. Luckily it's the 'I can't wait to show off'-variant of that expression, not the 'I almost pity you for being so stupid' one.

For a very short moment, Sans wonders if it's weird that he has such specific names for Gaster's different faces.

The doors of the decontamination chamber slide open with a loud hiss and clank, and even though the suit regulates temperature as best it can, a brutal wave of dry heat rolls over Sans' entire body. Before them stretches a long, rounded tunnel with glass walls so thick that they distort the view beyond into a flickering mess of a thousand different pieces ‒ like the jigsaw puzzle Chara showed him. Orange light fills the entire tunnel and Sans catches himself staring down at the surface of the lake. It's constantly moving in lazy swirls, forming giant bubbles that grow and grow until they burst violently and spray liquid fire everywhere. It seems like it should be loud, but it's almost completely silent inside their narrow tunnel. Their own heavy footsteps and the sound of their breath through the filters on their helmets are the only things he can hear.

Gaster drags him forward a little and Sans' head snaps back up. They begin tromping along the tunnel, which is rising steeply right at the beginning and Sans has to pause after almost every step to catch his breath. Cooling air is being pumped into his helmet and through the network of tubes along his suit, but it does nothing to keep him from sweating so much the heavy material clings to every part of his body.

It feels like an eternity passed, but he finally does make it up the slope and doesn't even have the energy for a relieved sigh when he sees Gaster holding open the doors to a metal elevator to the right of the tube. The elevator doesn't have walls, just a waist high railing, but it moves through its own glass tube, so it doesn't make Sans quite as nervous as he thought it would. Though it shakes a little when he steps inside and Gaster pulls the gate shut behind them, which makes Sans cling to the railing a bit more insistently than is probably necessary.

Loudly rattling and creaking, the elevator carries them upwards, then stops for a moment at a kind of intersection of glass tubes, before shooting off to the side and towards the Core along a thick rail. Somewhere along the line, Gaster has opened up a little panel on the side and plugged some cables into his phone, now typing code again and only occasionally stopping to look around, as if to orientate himself.

"There are about two hundred of these elevators in here," he says and Sans is glad that he now has something to listen to so he doesn't have to keep staring into the orange abyss below him. "All strictly programmed to only move in very specific ways and grant access to very specific areas. They are the only manner of transportation we have here, so the places we can or can't go are entirely determined by the programming."

Right before they reach another intersection, Gaster presses a combination of buttons on the panel and they stutter to a halt. There is some whirring and clanking above them and Sans leans forward, curiously watching as the rail at the intersection rearranges itself to open up a new path. Gaster grins proudly when they start moving again, very slowly going around the corner before stopping again while the rail behind them reverts back to its original state. Only then does the elevator pick up its previous speed again, flying along one of the thousands of tubes spanning over the lake, seemingly inaccessible from the outside.

"To find us in here," Gaster continues with a content smile, casually leaning against the handrail, "you'd first have to know it's even possible to enter the Core, which nobody except me does; then you'd have to know the exact path to the entrance through the elevator network, which, again, only I do. And even if you somehow found out about one and two, you'd then have to be able to hack the transportation programming, which I specifically designed to be unhackable by anyone but myself."

Sans might have asked a few questions, but right after Gaster finished speaking they suddenly drop down a few levels and Sans just gasps breathlessly as his stomach feels as if it's lifting up into his throat. With a loud clanking, they change direction again, now zipping around in a broad arc and picking up speed along the way. Sans is holding onto the handrail with both arms, watching as the Core steadily fills up more and more of his field of view. They dip further below it, unsettlingly close to the surface of the lava lake, and Sans can't see a ceiling or walls on the other side; everything is taken up by the enormous globe hanging over them, seemingly far too close already, even though they've barely even made it halfway across the lake.

"There are struts holding it in place, by the way." Gaster still hasn't moved from his casual position, while Sans is fighting the centrifugal force with all his might in an increasingly desperate attempt to stay upright. "I get really stupid questions from anyone who sees it for the first time. It's like, here, look at the biggest scientific accomplishment of the last five centuries, and all they want to know is 'How does it float?' It doesn't float. Also, and this is another thing I have to clarify way too often, it's not actually pulsating. That's the electromagical field surrounding it, which is so strong it's actually visible, so it creates the illusion of the matter beneath it expanding and contracting." When they drop down again even further, Gaster shoots Sans a quick look and chuckles lightly. "You alright over there? Please don't puke inside the helmet."

Sans might be a bit shaky right now, but it's less the erratic movement that's making him queasy ‒ it actually reminds him of the chair escapades Gaster and him had in the labs ‒ but the whole environment they're moving through. Looking at the Core makes him think of the images of planets he saw in Alphys' science books, which already made him feel terribly insignificant, even while just looking at tiny pictures.

Actually seeing a construct so incomprehensibly massive looming above him is beyond any concept of plain awe; it makes his soul shrink in on itself and his mind refuse to even form proper thoughts. As if anything he could think here could even come close to appropriately capturing the significance of this ‒ even just calling it a 'machine' feels insufficient. Sans looks at it, at this Core, the heart of the entire Underground, and it almost feels like an _entity_ to him.

The entire way across takes about fifteen minutes, even at their increasingly crazy speed. The last five minutes in particular are an experience, with Sans constantly thinking they must be close enough already, there is no way those glowing blue gaps between the shiny, silvery plates of the Core's surface could be any bigger than they already appear. But then they keep going closer, and the gaps keep growing and growing until they're chasms, with a whole other world of intricate panels and cables and magical currents flowing inside them and producing that blue glow.

It's one of those chasms that they are headed towards, it turns out. What looked like a thin and delicate web of blue hairlines from afar is now a giant pathway further into the Core, wide enough for twenty elevators, possibly. Gaster has his phone out again, disconnected from the elevator this time, and as he types and types at a completely abnormal speed ‒ really, Sans watches as his fingers seem to blur from the rapid movement and thinks it shouldn't be possible to type that fast ‒ their entire surroundings change form. Silvery panels pop out of the seemingly solid walls to slide out of the way and open up a new passage, wires and tubes are bent to the side, entire sections get remotely turned off as they travel past it, only for the blue, crackling currents to jump back into action right behind them. Sans almost gets tired of watching the display, that's how long it takes to get to where they want.

Every once in a while, an uninvited, but painfully persistent thought pipes up in the back of his head, remarking on the fact that unlike the lab, this is a place he couldn't ever leave again without Gaster allowing him to.

He doesn't really know why that thought should matter. He wants to be here, after all.

"Here we go," Gaster suddenly says after about ten more minutes of navigating through the Core. The elevator slows down and two large panels right in front of them slide to the side with a whirring sound, revealing ‒ a remarkably plain looking hallway, actually.

Gaster seems excited, so Sans tries to not look too unimpressed. "I put a lab inside the Core." Gaster sounds like he's giggling with every word. "Fully equipped, fully functional. Probably even more so than the official ones, since I was the one who personally calibrated this." Despite the heavy metal boots, he practically jumps out of the elevator and lightly punches Sans in the shoulder as he climbs after him. "An entire lab! Inside of a nuclear magic reactor! Sometimes I truly can't get over how brilliant I am."

Well, alright, phrased like that it does sound impressive. But after the whole lake of lava, the seemingly floating and pulsating globe and the pretty light show of blue currents, Sans still thinks that the actual design of the lab could have been a bit more inspired.

It really does look boring. They go through another decontamination chamber, finally get rid of the suits and then Sans just trails after Gaster, who is jumping about the place and checking the equipment. The laboratory looks almost exactly the same as the ones back in the facility, only even brighter and entirely white. Everything is dusty and covered in plastic sheets, as apparently Gaster hasn't been here a single time since he built it.

He is busy unpacking everything and it takes a while for Sans to realize that he doesn't have to follow him anymore ‒ he can't leave this place anyways and nothing works yet, so it's not like he can get in trouble by exploring on his own. That's probably also Gaster's train of thought, because when he asks for permission he barely gets more than an impatient wave and a "Yeah yeah, just don't break anything. We can't actually afford to do that anymore."

So the first thing Sans does is find the parts of Gaster's secret lair that don't look like a laboratory. He wouldn't have assumed there even were any, but the first door he finds actually leads to a little office with no lab equipment in sight anywhere. It's still mostly white, with everything made of some kind of very sturdy plastic, but there is a chair with a soft cushion, a green, fluffy rug in front of the desk (at least Sans assumes it's fluffy, it's still imprisoned it its plastic bag like everything else) and a shelf full of books. Behind the next door is a sparse kitchen, equipped with a microwave oven and a very small, unplugged refrigerator.

It almost starts feeling absurd how normal everything looks. Already Sans catches himself kind of forgetting where he is, the whole journey here slowly fading into a dreamlike memory in the back of his mind, as if it never really happened. He finds a tiny corner in the lab, not a real room but still a place that's mostly free of science stuff, where there's an actual bed with actual pillows and a duvet.

It's too similar to being in a house. Sans suddenly misses the smell of wood, of flowers and sweet food. He knows none of the books in the office are about dragons, he knows there is no colorful collection of canned vegetables in the fridge and if he saw any toys or stuffed animals lying around, he would immediately slap himself in order to stop hallucinating.

He doesn't know exactly how long ago the Core was built, but the way everyone talks about it it must have been at least a couple of years ago. Gaster had put his plan into motion back then, very much aware that he'd someday need a place to hide, but he couldn't have known that Sans would be there too. There is only one bed, one chair at the small table in the kitchen, one office desk. Sans was never supposed to be here. There is no space for Sans here.

"Good news," Gaster yells from the other side of the room, his head having disappeared into a deep cupboard. "Even with the two of us, rations should last for at least five years. I had hoped for ten years free of social interaction when I built this, but I guess you can't have everything." When he turns around, he's ripping open the plastic wrapping of two plain packaged sandwiches, closing the cupboard behind him with the heel of his foot. "Hungry?"

Sans shakes his head. "Tired," he says, his voice coming out a little bit more whiny than he intended. But it is still the middle of the night and he just spent the last hour stuck in a heavy suit with metal shoes and shoulder pads.

Gaster sighs, chewing on his sandwich thoughtfully, and then gestures at the bed with the other one. "Well, take the bed for now. I'll find a way to set something up for you tomorrow."

With a tired nod, Sans starts unpacking the bedding, crumpling up the plastic sheets in a big ball next to the bed while Gaster watches him. By the time Sans is crawling under the duvet, yawning widely, he has finished his sandwich and went to dim down the lights in that one corner of the lab. Sans can barely keep his eyes open, but Gaster is thinking and almost nervously tapping his finger against the wall next to the light switch, so he still wants to say something. Sans watches him and waits.

"Hey, kid?" he starts finally, coming over to the bed to sit down on the mattress, one hand hesitantly landing on Sans' duvet covered shoulder. "You made a good choice here, you know. Coming with me to help me out. And, I suppose... you should know that I appreciate that." His other hand flounders through the air for a moment, maybe in search of a better way to say what he means. But then, with a sharp nod, he decisively ends the conversation and gets back up.

Sans closes his eyes, shuts off his mind and, at last, gets to fall asleep, forgetting all about choices and who he makes them for.

* * *

"Gaster." Sans is tapping his fingers on the armrest of the chair he is once again strapped into, trying to get the man's attention. "Gaster. Why did the noble gas cry?"

"Sans, seriously," Gaster mouths around the cap of a needle stuck between his teeth, "I am going to hit you. I'm going to take that one HP of yours and bring it down to zero point zero zero zero zero zero zero zerozerozero one."

A short beat of silence. "Because all its friends argon." Sans grins, reveling in the groaning curses that Gaster tries to articulate past all the stuff in his mouth. The jab of the needle is a bit more forceful than usual, but luckily it's not aimed at Sans but at the tube hanging from his soul. It's a bit uncomfortable, but ever since they installed the connection ports right into his soul, hooking it up to all kinds of machinery has become much less painful.

"You told that one before," Gaster helpfully informs him, after he finally takes the caps out of his mouth, puts them back on the needles and stores everything away safely. "At least try to come up with some new material."

"Challenge?" Sans grins and Gaster turns to him with a dark frown, pointing at him with another needle. "No."

After two whole years of being stuck here with Gaster, a lot of things about him are much less scary than before.

(And some are more scary.)

But by now, Sans recognizes an empty threat when he hears one and mostly knows how far he can push the man before his annoyance tips over into real anger. Right now, it's just nerves and lack of sleep, as well as frustration over still not having gotten anywhere with this line of experiments.

Sans, on the other hand, is mainly bored. He watches with a yawn as Gaster starts screwing cables to the ME display monitor, injecting some more contrast fluid into Sans' soul and watching impatiently as the scan slowly picks up the distribution of its magic particles. They still all appear in the same color, the same white as before, and Gaster throws his head back with a long, forcefully calm breath.

"Still no blue?" Sans asks unnecessarily, he already knows the answer of course, but some days he's just really not in the mood to sit by quietly ‒ if he does, there is a good chance Gaster just completely forgets there is another living being with him. Sans tested it once, how long they could go without exchanging a single word with each other, but he gave up after two weeks of nothing but silence and disgruntled soliloquies.

"Well, we've at least gotten to a point where there is a really white white on one hand and a more yellowish white on the other," Gaster grumbles, turning the monitor so that Sans can see the scan of his own soul, where it shows millions of tiny white particles circulating through his magic stream. "What color is that, eggshell? Or something equally pretentious, like, I don't know, vanilla cloud white?"

"There is a bluish one," Sans claims, lifting a finger and trying to point to it as best he can, what with his wrists tied to the armrest. "On the upper left crown."

Gaster leans closer, squinting suspiciously. "Where do you see blue there? That's all white. I wasn't even entirely serious about the eggshell one." He rips off his glasses and lightly pounds his knuckles against his forehead. "And I just said 'eggshell' unironically, what the actual fuck."

"It has a blue tint," Sans insists. "I call it misty mountain pearly blue white ‒ baby cream. Dove."

"Stop." Gaster stands up and puts his glasses on again. "It's supposed to be cyan and azure. And that's already a far more extensive chromatics vocabulary than I ever wanted to have. Incoming." Sans steels himself at the warning, as he only has a few seconds to prepare for Gaster's gloved hand reaching straight into his chest and tugging at his soul. With the other he pulls the overhead light closer and then he leans forward until his nose almost touches the transparent skin. Sans stares at the ceiling, reciting the periodic table in his head to distract himself from the breath being punched out of him, the taste of blood in his mouth and the rushing of magic in his ears.

"The particles themselves are definitely colored," Gaster murmurs, turning the soul left and right and examining it through the magnifying glass that's connected to his work glasses. Sans gasps quietly, the muscles on his arms contracting automatically as his body wants to fight the intrusion and his mind fights his body, chanting insistently that it's 'just a bit of pain' and 'nothing we can't deal with' and 'bismuth, bromine, lithium, beryllium, barium...'

"The bloody machine still can't pick it up for some stupid reason, even with the modified contrast." With a disgustingly wet sound, Gaster pulls his hand out again and swivels back towards the machine, angrily punching buttons while Sans coughs and wheezes, desperately trying to spit the excess blood and magic dripping from his mouth off to the side. He's tired of spitting the stuff up on himself, he's running out of clean shirts for this month. And it's only the seventh.

"Good thing I'm not a fucking engineer," Gaster rants off to the side. "I mean, that would be convenient, can't have that around here."

"Call Freeda again," Sans suggests hoarsely, still catching his breath, but determined to not let this interfere with his goal of being annoying today. "She can teach you."

"I'm gonna teach you, shithead," Gaster grumbles, talking more to the machine than to Sans, but at least he's still acknowledging his input and not just simply talking to himself. "I'm teaching her! Still! Even though I'm basically non-existent as far as monsterkind is concerned, but here I am, passing on my best research to my fucking replacement so she can pretend to be solving this crisis legally."

"Everyone probably thinks she's way smarter than you now," Sans grins.

Alright, definitely venturing into dangerous territory here, he thinks, as Gaster fixes him with a cold stare, a low growl escaping him. "Watch it, buddy."

Sans just keeps up the grin, knowing full well that showing any signs of intimidation only makes the creator lose respect for him. Though even after such a long time with only the two of them, it's still kind of an amazing concept to him that he actually _has_ some of his respect in the first place. It's weird, but Sans is getting a little older and it changes things, very slowly.

Sometimes he feels that it's becoming more dangerous, somehow. He hopes it's a wrong feeling.

Still, he takes care never to go too far, to always pull back a little after poking Gaster a bit too harshly. "She's not even officially the Royal Scientist," he says now with a shrug and Gaster nods, still glaring at him. "Of course she isn't, that would be ridiculous. Just as ridiculous as you trying to placate me, by the way."

His expression only grows more suspicious when Sans widens his grin. "Say, Gaster. Where does bad light ‒"

"No." Gaster's gestures are sharp and angry, but his tone of voice is just resigned. "I'm so done with this."

"No, just, where does bad ‒"

"Sans, I fucking swear."

"‒ bad light end up?"

Gaster throws up his hands and folds them on top of his head. "In prism. I know. I know all of these. I suffered through university with hundreds of wannabe science nerds who thought that kind of stuff was witty. Please stop."

"They just wanted to lighten the mood. Science is hard, I bet they had alkynes of trouble." Sans is even polite enough to add minimal sign language with his fingertips to clarify what he's talking about. Wouldn't want Gaster to miss the joke.

Apparently that didn't work though, because Gaster just stares at him in silence for a few seconds, entirely unimpressed ‒ which is not possible if he actually understood the joke, it was very impressive after all.

(Sans notices more and more how he apparently fell into this weird singularity where he is aware his jokes are bad, but somehow also sincerely likes them? A mystery he really shouldn't think about too hard.)

Then Gaster just turns his back towards Sans and keeps muttering frustrated complaints at the uncooperative machine. At least it sounds like muttering, because he's on Sans' right side. Even with turning his head as far as he can, Sans can't quite compensate for his bad ear on that side, so all the words just blend into each other and sound way too quiet.

They've been working on this for a long, long time, Sans thinks, leaning back into the chair and staring at the ceiling with a deep huff. Of course they have machines that can scan magic particles moving inside a soul and tell the normal, white monster ones apart from the colored human magic ones. But Sans has two types of human magic at once and trying to get the machine to differentiate between those has been nothing but a failure so far. Lately, their attempts just led to _all_ of the particles being displayed in white (and some in misty mountain pearly blue white baby cream dove.) It's especially frustrating because the cyan magic acts so very differently from the blue one, so it seems it should be easy to pinpoint why. Except it isn't.

Gaster reconfigures the settings on the scan, pulls up another ME monitoring device and rearranges some cables, then waves at Sans with his routine "Cyan attack" command. Sans barely spares a thought to summoning a row of light blue bones protruding from the floor. While Gaster oversees the readings, doing his best to adjust the scanner hovering on both sides of Sans' ribcage to get the best possible angle, Sans keeps himself busy by letting the bones bounce up and down and then lazily using them to form words and images in the air.

"White attack," comes the next order after about ten minutes, and Sans switches the blue bones out for white ones.

"And blue attack," is the unsurprising conclusion following after yet another ten minutes.

"Direction or force?" Sans asks, already lifting up one of the little plastic balls they always use for these tests, letting it float in the air.

"Force," Gaster answers and Sans lifts an eyebrow at him even though he isn't looking.

"Arm?" he says with a hint of reproval, because Gaster knows full well his gravity magic works best in combination with a gesture, but still forgets to unfasten his wrist every time.

Every. Time.

It's not a good day to be snappy, it seems, because Gaster throws some non-vital instruments in his hand to the floor angrily before swiveling around and reaching for the restraints on Sans' right hand ‒ even though he _knows_ that's his bad hand. Now that has Sans getting a bit ticked off and he bends his arm away as far as he can. "Wrong one."

"Oh for fuck's sake," Gaster explodes at him, standing up so abruptly that the chair clatters to the floor behind him. "You really have to stop being so pathetic about this." His movements while walking to the other side of Sans' chair are brisk and sharp, the force with which he pulls at the restraints at his left hand clearly intended to be as painful as it ends up being. "It's a psychosomatic issue, you know that full well."

Sans hates talking about this, he hates it so much, and he would keep his mouth shut if it didn't feel like he has to defend _her_ as well as himself every time this comes up. "It's still real," he says, the usual argument almost getting stuck between his teeth on the way out, as if it's tired of being brushed aside as invalid.

"It's something your own brain talked itself into believing," Gaster counters, as always, and Sans can't remember how often they've had this exact exchange. "If you weren't so set on feeling sorry for yourself, you could easily talk yourself out of it again."

Sans angrily works his jaw, grinding his teeth against each other as he makes a quick gesture and increases the force of gravity on the plastic ball to such a high degree that it actually bursts upon impact with the ground. That's nothing new, though, and he just picks up the next one from the box to the side and repeats the motion.

"Oh, great," Gaster intones snidely, picking the chair back up and letting himself fall into it with an exaggerated rolling of the eyes. "We're back to breaking our limited resources. Genius level argumentation tactics right there."

"Better than having the same conversation over and over again and expecting different results," Sans says monotonously, breaking up their usual formula of bickering for the next half hour. He's angry, but tired, and every time they talk about this it feels just a little more pointless.

"Is it though?" Gaster continues provocatively, obviously not willing to let it go. "Is it really? Because one of these options merely has us quarreling a bit while the other destroys our equipment. But, hey, as long as you're having an outlet for your unprofessional displays of immaturity."

And Sans doesn't like being called unprofessional, of all things. It reminds him how Gaster almost views him as a real colleague now sometimes, but then before he can be properly proud of that achievement, the accusation of unprofessionalism drops him down several levels again and he's back to being nothing more than a subject, a SA-N5.

Part of him also wonders how to feel about the whole 'immature' thing; he's now about the same age Alphys was when he last saw her, and by now he understands at least a little bit that children are supposed to act differently than adults. Alphys certainly did. So on one hand, being immature probably shouldn't even be an issue for him, seeing as he is, in fact, a not yet entirely matured being. But on the other hand, he doesn't think he wants to be seen as an immature child in the first place, so the criticism does actually hurt him a bit.

... Also, today is apparently one of his overthinking days. How he loves those.

He decides to follow the path of least resistance and go back to their routine patterns of discussion, which seems to be what Gaster wants. "I didn't decide to make my right side less functional than the left," he argues without any passion or even real conviction. It's hard to be completely invested when part of him does feel pathetic for not being able to get rid of this, when part of him does believe Gaster that it's his own fault. When he knows full well that this only happened because he was too weak.

"Yes, fair enough," Gaster easily agrees, waving him off as though he went off on a tangent with that. "But how does that impact your ability to now make the decision to put some effort into fixing it?"

"It's not about effort," Sans mumbles, watching the creator's fingers tensely drum on the desk next to the keyboard as he waits for the scanner results.

"It's always about effort. Don't whine about not being able to change something when you're too lazy to even try."

"I'm not whining, you're whining!" Sans snaps at him, so tired of only ever being attacked and never fighting back. Gaster turns to him with a loud, derogative laugh, leaning back in his chair to regard Sans with his signature arrogant amusement and raises his palm at him in a mocking gesture. "Yes, please, go on and tell me about how you don't ever whine about anything ever. 'Gaster, I'm bored! Gaster, my soul hurts! Gaster, pay attention to me!' I'm so blessed that I never have to hear anything like that from you."

Now Sans has to look away in shame. With just the two of them stuck in the same place for years without any opportunity to leave, without any real space between them, it has become easy to sometimes forget his place. So yes, he recognizes himself in Gaster's mocking tone, recognizes easily that he should stop arguing now because he's in the wrong. "I don't whine about this," he still insists, waggling the fingers of his right hand, which at all hours of the day feels like it's fallen asleep. "That's just you."

"So, calling you out on your bullshit is whining now, is it?"

"It's not bullshit." Sans never raises his voice, he knows from watching Gaster that it's much scarier to remain calm and collected even when angry, but his voice becomes more rough and hollow when he's really mad. Like now, for example. "I can't fix myself by wishing real hard. It's a ‒ it's a psychological thing, you said that. That's something you need help with from others."

"Ah yes, spoken like a true wimp." Gaster's patronizing smile remains firmly in place, but his eyes are getting harder around the edges with each one of Sans' protests. The once completely smooth skin of his face is now permanently crinkly around his eyes and the corners of his mouth, but it looks especially bad today, after he spent the last two nights working on refining the contrast and the scanner settings instead of sleeping. "The kind of argument you only hear from people who have never, and never will accomplish anything on their own and are desperately trying to validate their complete lack of any talent. Should I start calling you Dr. Pollard from now on?"

Sans' eyes are tearing up a bit and he can't say if it's out of anger or because he's actually hurt by Gaster's insults. It's not like this kind of talk is anything new, but maybe they're just both in a bad place today. Trying to pull himself out of the conflict once and for all, Sans looks away and just points his chin in the direction of Gaster's office with the bookshelf. "You have books on psychology in there," he says. "Maybe read some. Might help with your own issues, too."

Even though it's definitely one of the most insolent things Sans has ever said, and to Gaster of all people, he doesn't expect the kind of pay off he receives. The words have barely left his mouth when Gaster's flat palm connects with the side of his head with a loud, resounding slap. His head is ripped to the side, smacking into the high neck-rest of the metal chair with such sudden force that he pulls the muscles in his neck. A ringing in his ears drowns out all other noise and the initial numb feeling in his cheek quickly drains away to be replaced by a sharp, throbbing pain.

It's not the worst pain. Compared to what he knows he can withstand, it's hardly even worth mentioning. Sure, the taste of blood is back in his mouth and one of his teeth now feels a little wobbly, but they're supposed to fall out soon and be replaced by better ones anyways, so that's not really a problem. Still, while he knows this isn't even close to as bad as it could be, something about this makes him pause, makes his thoughts grind to a complete halt as he lies there, bound and unable to move.

This was not for a test. Gaster hurt him, and it had nothing to do with science at all. Slowly, Sans turns his head back around. When he meets the creator's expression, it's an odd, tense grimace of disbelief and hectic calculation that he has never seen before. The hand that he hit him with is hanging loosely at his side, the fingers slowly curling and uncurling again, the other one is hovering in the air just below Gaster's chin, twitching nervously. For the longest time, both Gaster and Sans just remain as they are, staring at each other, one thinking and one waiting, numbly.

Gaster coughs. "That ‒ well," he starts, the almost-stutter accentuated by a nigh helpless little gesture with his raised hand. "That was a rather unnecessary act of violence." He sounds unsure, questioning. Like he isn't certain whether or not he really just did that. "How very unprofessional."

While Gaster appears to become more and more upset the longer he thinks about this, Sans is already calming down again. Really, what else did he expect to gain by continuously poking the man for a reaction? Surprise, he got a reaction. He leans his head back, the ringing slowly subsiding in his left ear and, of course, sticking around way longer in the right one. Gaster uselessly presses a few buttons on the machines, as if to just give his hands something to do, and Sans watches from the corner of his eyes while carefully examining the newly loose tooth in the back of his mouth with the tip of his tongue.

Then, the creator stops his nervous antics, sighs a deep, long sigh and takes off his glasses to rub his eyes. "Well, we're both tired," he says roughly, as he turns and unfastens the rest of Sans' restraints. "And the scanner needs to be reworked anyways. Let's just ‒ take a breather." He unplugs the cables from Sans' soul with unusual care, even though it doesn't make much of a difference pain-wise, and then waves him off the chair without once looking at his face.

The speed with which he wraps up all the cables connected to their ME particle scanning machine is remarkable; he is done and pushing the machine along with him before Sans has even completely climbed out of the chair. "I'll be in my office," he calls over his shoulder, finally with his normal voice again. "Don't disturb me."

Sans turns to see the office door slam shut, followed seconds later by the sound of a key turning.

Well. At least this means they're back in familiar territory.

* * *

The last time Gaster locked himself away for that long was when he was angry about not getting Muffet's soul for his tests, as far as Sans remembers. That was a long time ago. Back then he also locked himself into a separate part of the lab, meaning he could still do experiments. This time, he's just in his office. And yes, he has the machine with him, but he left all the equipment needed to make modifications on it in the lab.

The first day, Sans tries to keep himself busy the usual way. He practices his magic, careful about not breaking anything this time, but there's a limit on how often he can do the same attack over and over and over again before tiring of it magically, mentally and physically. He ends that first day early, shortly contemplating the risk of sleeping in Gaster's bed ‒ it's more comfortable than the collection of loose blankets and bunched up clothes that serve as his own bed on the floor. But Gaster doesn't like having to wake and move him when he comes back to take a nap himself, so Sans decides to avoid possibly angering him even more.

The second day, Sans would normally look at the books and either search for something new in the ones he already read a thousand times, or try again to understand one of the really advanced ones. But usually when Gaster dismisses him for a few days and does his own thing, he does so in the lab and Sans has to keep to the office and the kitchen. This time, he can't get to the books and it's a really annoying break in their protocol. He practices magic again, but grows tired of it even more quickly than the day before and then spends the evening half-heartedly taking care of some routine maintenance that he's allowed to do: refilling and sorting syringes, filing some reports on the rate of their resource depletion, recording today's radiation levels inside and outside their insulated laboratory (they're a tiny bit higher than normal, but still well within acceptable levels) and testing the continued functionality of some equipment.

The third day, he risks Gaster's wrath by using pen and paper for drawing. It's a senseless waste of resources, especially their supply of pens is getting scarce these days, so Sans draws the best picture he can with as few lines as possible, which means he spends more time looking at the empty page, thinking and planning, than he does actually drawing. When he's done, he keeps the picture for a while, staring at it to commit it to memory, then destroys it with the Bunsen burner and hides the ashes.

The fourth and fifth day, he sleeps. In Gaster's bed, because the side of his face stopped hurting and he doesn't care about making him angry anymore.

On day six, he opens up one of the panels that's covering the large windows on one side of the lab. The view is of the inside of the Core, naturally, and he lays in bed and numbly watches the display of shimmering blue magic and electricity jumping along delicate machinery. They're only supposed to open these panels when Gaster wants to remotely work on the actual Core and has to see what he's doing; the risk of increased radiation is higher like this, but Sans finds it's an acceptable price to pay for the pretty view.

Day seven is when the boredom gets so overwhelming that he's tempted to start throwing things at the office door. Luckily, he learned his lesson from the last time he tried to elicit a reaction by being a shithead. He wanders around the lab instead, looking for anything new to do and knowing full well that there isn't anything. There never is.

There is only one part of the laboratory that he has never looked at, and that's the corner where Gaster stores his personal projects. Sans wouldn't have thought it possible, but even in this enclosed space, Gaster manages to do things without Sans noticing. Sometimes it's on purpose. Gaster then tells him that whatever he's working on could be dangerous to Sans' soul and he locks him into the office or the kitchen for a few days. Sometimes it seems to just happen. Sans will go to sleep and when he wakes up the next morning, there is a new construct standing in the corner of the lab, half hidden behind the partition screen and covered by a white sheet. Gaster has never really made a big deal out of it ‒ it's just an agreed upon fact between them that, as far as Sans is concerned, that corner of the room doesn't exist. He's never even tried to look at it.

But it's day seven and Sans is so bored he fears parts of his brain will just start dribbling out his ears.

Peering behind the screen is much more anti-climactic than Sans expected, to be honest. Nothing world-shaking jumps out at him ‒ it's actually mostly stacks of paper. Sans leafs through some of them, but the theories and formulas written on them are a completely different level than the science that he knows so far. It looks even more complicated than the books in the office that he still doesn't understand and that hurt his head every time he tries to read them.

There are some unfinished machine parts and naked circuit boards, obviously attempts to put the theories written here into practice, but it's still a fact that Gaster is not an engineer. He thinks about stuff, he doesn't actually build it himself. Even the Core, which he is so insanely proud of it's almost ridiculous, is actually something he couldn't have built on his own. Sans knows that, and Gaster knows that Sans knows that, and it's been ground for one or two heated arguments already.

Sans puts the papers and unfinished devices away again carefully and inches his way past them. Further in the back are some data pads and monitors, as well as a large whiteboard leaning against the wall. It's full of scribbles and models of magic flow and soul science, obviously an ongoing process of trying to figure something out, judging by the smears where previous parts of the theory were erased and the red circled passages with large exclamation marks next to them. Curiously, Sans stares at it for a while, because it feels like he's seen some parts of it before. It's definitely about souls and human magic, that much he can make out. He wonders why that's back here with the projects Gaster deems 'not part of their actual work,' when it's obviously dealing with the same issues they're trying to solve out there.

Behind the whiteboard, pushed all the way into the furthest corner, stands the largest of the projects in here. It's about the height of a desk, as wide as Sans' small bed and completely covered in one of those white sheets. For a second, Sans grumpily thinks that a lot of fabric is being wasted back here while he has to make due with rolled up sweaters as pillows. But he quickly brushes the thoughts aside to continue his investigation, very slowly lifting up a corner of the sheet and peering underneath.

Whatever he's looking at here seems a lot more finished than all the other things stored in this corner. It's like a sort of ‒ capsule? Made of dark gray metal and with lots of little monitors, control panels and keypads. Thick, black cables connect it to the wall and some thinner ones are plugged into other machines off to the side, very similar to the ones they use while running tests on Sans' soul.

Sans pulls the sheet back bit by bit, rolling it up as he goes so it doesn't become an unmanageable mess of cloth that'll interfere with the large pile of cables. The top of the capsule is made of thick glass it seems, fogged up from the inside and ‒ and lit in a deep blue? Sans pauses, something cold taking hold of his stomach and _squeezing_.

It's not a capsule. It's a tank. Just like...

Throwing caution to the wind, he rips the sheet away completely, presses his hands on top of the tank and pulls himself up to get a better look. Underneath the glass, covered in thin tubes and cables and surrounded by a small circle of artificial, translucent flesh, lies a soul.

Glowing, deep blue, and _pulsing_.

With shaking hands and breath stuck in his throat, Sans tears his eyes away from the soul, drawn to the thick black letters that are printed beneath the rim of the glass.

 **SA-N6.**


	11. Two Souls

**Two Souls**

Sans' mind gets stuck. As if it's trying to move on but keeps getting yanked back by the black letters, unable to even begin grasping the meaning of all this.

His eyes are glued to the name. SA-N6. A designation, his designation, but not quite. It's one step further, one level up, it's him but better.

He's being replaced.

That's the thought his mind needed to kick back into action. With a jolt Sans finds back to reality, where he is leaning on a tank like his that isn't his, staring at a soul that's his but not, and it only takes him a second to get scared in a way he only ever was once before, when _she_ was dying and he thought he was too. Gaster is making a new him, a new Sans, a new subject.

Because SA-N5 is broken, and useless, and has been getting way too rebellious lately, and what is Gaster going to do to Sans if he doesn't need him anymore!

Sans presses his hands to his mouth, hard, trying to keep the involuntary, whimpering noises inside that are tumbling out of him with every strained breath. He needs to lean forward, his knees shaking under him. His own soul is a jittering, jolting mess inside his chest, nearly overflowing as it responds to Sans' mortal fear by pumping magic through his veins to fight a threat that can't be fought.

Not with magic, that is.

When he finally finds his balance again, Sans straightens up as best he can and bites down on his knuckles, hard. The dull pain makes it easier for his brain to sort out its priorities ‒ bleeding wound on his hand now, deathly fear of an immaterial, theoretical menace later. Sans breathes, deeply and calmly, lowers his hands from his face and nervously clenches them to fists by his side.

A thought suddenly occurs to him that seems so much more appealing than everything else at the moment: Just ignore it.

That's really, really stupid, he thinks as straightens out the white sheet that ended up as a crumpled up ball on the floor. That doesn't even begin to solve anything, he thinks as he throws it back over the tank, somehow immediately calming down when he can't see the blue glow anymore. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it's not there, he yells at himself silently as he backs away, slowly at first, then turning around and practically bolting for the partition screen. He stumbles a little as he rounds the corner and pulls the screen back to its original position, where it covers up most of the corner and all of the tank.

This is the reason you're even being replaced in the first place, his mind sadistically whispers as he crawls back under Gaster's covers on the bed. Because of pathetic, fatuitous reactions like this.

Sans pulls the duvet all the way up to cover his ears and presses his face into the pillow. What else is he supposed to do. What even can he do.

(Some quiet, unfinished thoughts are wafting around in the back of his mind trying to answer, but he doesn't like them and pushes them away with force.)

No, surely, surely he can still save this. Gaster has failsafes in place, that's nothing new, he always does. Of course he has one for Sans, that doesn't mean he's going to use it. If he could, he'd probably build a second Gaster in case he dies before he can finish his project, and that's a terrifying thought on so many levels that Sans very hastily drops it and decides to never look at it again.

He'll just have to do extra well from now on, be as useful as he possibly can and never, ever pick a fight again, what was he even thinking when he started with that habit, is he actually that stupid? He forgot his place, that's what started this whole mess, and it's time he grows up and stops acting like a spoiled brat. That must be the right thing to do here, it simply must be. It's the only thing.

In by far the most stupid, desperate corner of his mind, he suddenly tries really hard to remember the path from the Core back to the outside world and wonders if he could manage to hack Gaster's programming of the elevators. It's so absurd that he actually wheezes a helpless chuckle into the pillow and then clutches it a bit tighter to his body.

Even knowing that behaving from now on is the right course, part of him desperately, furiously wants to go and break down the office door, to confront Gaster and demand that he explain himself. Part of him just ‒ feels betrayed.

Well. That's a lie. It's way more than just a part.

Sitting up abruptly, Sans throws the pillow across the room with a hoarse, frustrated yell, and when it doesn't do anything but flop onto the floor disappointingly softly, he quickly brings his left hand down and impales it with a cluster of sharp bones. Then, without thinking, or maybe just without really caring, he throws his hand out to the side and the bones go flying through the air, clashing against the office door one after another until a thick crack appears across the wood.

Something inside the office falls to the floor with a loud clank, followed by a vigorous stream of cursing. Sans doesn't have time for regret ‒ he just about manages to clamber out of the bed before the door flies open so fast it crashes against the wall and immediately rebounds off of it. An extremely disgruntled, disheveled and overall scruffy looking Gaster catches the door just seconds before it hits him in the face and immediately leans down to investigate the damage.

"What the fuck." It feels like he maybe meant to yell it, but then halfway on the way to his mouth his voice decided to take a break and ended up as nothing more than a whisper. The look he pins Sans in place with would also be much more intimidating if his face wasn't to fifty percent consumed by the shadows under his eyes. "Have you lost it now? Is that what's happening? Because honestly, I was hoping for at least a few more years before we got to that point, so skipping ahead without telling me would be very inconsiderate of you."

And Sans just stands, staring. He doesn't think he's ever felt as stuck as right now. Screams and accusations are clawing at the back of his throat, demanding to be freed, but fear and reason tell him to be quiet, to be useful and well-behaved. Which is also completely moot, because he already ripped Gaster's pillow apart and then nearly tore the door to shreds. For lack of anything worthwhile to do to save the situation, he resigns himself to just standing still and watching the feathers from inside the pillow gently float through the air around him.

Gaster wants to take a step forward, but his legs almost give out under him and he clutches the doorknob with a mumbled curse. "Stood up too fast, don't mind me," he mumbles in Sans' general direction, leaning his forehead against the door. Sans, not entirely torn from his weird, helpless state in between anger and resignation, still recognizes an opportunity to help when he sees one, so he robotically walks over to the kitchen, gets one of the plain sandwiches they have en masse and that make him want to puke just looking at them, and brings it back to Gaster.

Gaster's eyes take a bit too long to focus first on Sans, then on the sandwich that he's holding out to him with a neutral expression. But he grabs it and quickly takes a bite after a few seconds, devouring the food with his usual lack of grace and table manners. It's not like he didn't have anything to eat this whole week, Sans knows that there are food stocks back in the office from the times he himself was locked in there, but he can definitely imagine Gaster getting so absorbed in whatever he was doing in there that he just plain forgot to eat anything without Sans there to remind him.

With his mouth still stuffed full of tasteless white bread, he frowns at Sans, making about a thousand more wrinkles appear on his gaunt face. "I really hope you didn't just break the door out of some misguided desire to feed me."

Sans would scoff at that, usually. But with his entire brain still busily debating the merits of either being rebellious or obedient, he just doesn't react at all, caught in his indecisiveness and actually kind of liking it. At least it means he doesn't have to do anything.

Gaster doesn't seem to like it though. His face scrunches up even more, the lines on his forehead growing darker and deeper, and then he leans forward and snaps a finger against Sans' nose. "Don't be a drama queen," he says roughly. "Look, I could be pissed at you for a number of things as well, but here I am, being a responsible adult and putting it all behind me. So don't get hung up on one little lapse of judgment on my part."

It actually takes Sans a moment to figure out what he's talking about. In relation to what he just discovered under that sheet back there, the little slap in the face from a week ago suddenly seems very insignificant. He finds that he really isn't angry about that at all, probably never was. It just caught him a bit off guard at first, but he's definitely over it now. So he answers with a shrug and a surprisingly sincere "whatever."

For some reason, Gaster doesn't appear to be buying it. He grumbles something into the rest of his sandwich as he stuffs it all in his mouth and swallows only seconds later, then gestures at the door and the floating feathers. "So what's this about?"

In the end, the decision basically makes itself without even waiting for any input from Sans. The tank is right there in the back of his mind, the glowing blue soul sending continuous shocks of fear through his body, but it's not like telling Gaster about that would change anything. It would even mean admitting that he explored the one part of the lab he isn't allowed to look at, only giving Gaster more reasons for wanting to replace him. Sans shrugs again. "I got bored?"

And what was supposed to be a very, very lame improvised excuse to detract attention from the main problem, somehow ends up resonating with Gaster in a way Sans really didn't expect. The man practically slumps against the door in a sudden bout of defeat, his eyes slipping halfway closed and slowly scanning the white, samey and sterile looking environment they've been caged in for two years. "Yeah," he agrees hoarsely. "Me too."

With a sharp breath, he pushes himself upright and takes a few steps backwards, returning to the office, but not before lightly putting a hand on Sans' head in an odd mixture of a pat and an order to follow him. Muscle memory makes Sans pull the door closed behind him, but as it falls shut the loose chunk of wood in the middle finally drops to the floor with a dull thud. Both Sans and Gaster stare at the hole for a few seconds. Sans feels that they're both insanely close to laughing hysterically at losing yet another way of putting up barriers between them.

"Eh," Gaster finally makes as he turns away, "we've got duct tape." He leans against the wall and waves Sans over to the chair. As Sans climbs onto it, he looks around and isn't nearly as surprised as he probably should be at the completely destroyed ME scanner lying on the floor. Bits and pieces of it are strewn all around the office and while Gaster likely at least started out with the intention of fixing it or building something new, it's pretty clear that he gave up very quickly and just dismantled the entire thing out of frustration.

Gaster notices Sans looking at the parts and tosses some of them over the table grumpily. "Yeah, that thing wasn't going to do what we want, no matter how we'd have calibrated it. We weren't even really aware of the ME crisis back when I built this place, so I couldn't have known the kind of equipment we'd need for our current research."

Sans catches the tiny gears rolling across the tabletop and lazily fits them back together in his hand, turning them and watching the teeth interlock. He low-key wonders if he could fix the entire machine back up if he tried. Probably not.

"So," Gaster starts again slowly and Sans quickly drops the gears to pay full attention; he has to behave from now on, after all. "We need new stuff. For the sake of our research and our sanity in equilibrium, I'm afraid. Couldn't hurt to stock up on our general resources either, so I guess I'm taking a trip outside. About three years earlier than I thought I would, but, well. No one's infallible."

Outside.

Sans' soul starts beating harshly in his chest, the thoughts racing back and forth through his mind, suddenly revisiting the idea of fleeing the Core that seemed so utterly ridiculous only minutes ago.

"I shouldn't be gone for too long, just a few hours," Gaster continues. "You hold down the fort here. And, seriously, don't break anymore shit."

Of course, of course he doesn't get to go with him, that's so obvious and Sans is really stupid. Why does he even bother thinking about things? He should, he should just stop.

Gaster flicks Sans' ear in exasperation, apparently aware that his thoughts aren't where they should be. "Okay, really, stop it with the drama." He sounds annoyed, but in a way that makes Sans think he's just masking being really worried about something. "The two of us are stuck with each other here, so while I usually appreciate anyone giving me the silent treatment, as it means less interaction with stupid people, it's kind of counterproductive in this case. It's just going to make us both more frustrated with each other and we've seen how that works out."

Even after all this time, Sans often doesn't know what to do with the things Gaster says to him sometimes. He gets a weird impression of something like regret from how he is talking right now, an odd desire for things to go back to normal. Whatever 'normal' is down here. Does it even make sense for this tone of voice to come from someone who's trying to permanently replace him? Sans sleepily rubs his forehead as it starts hurting from the confusion.

He's still set on following orders though, and the latest one is to stop the silent treatment he wasn't even aware he was giving. "Okay," he says, his voice so much smaller than he wants it to be. Nervously, he works his jaw for a moment, chewing on the words he wants to say but can't, before carefully looking up at Gaster who is watching him almost warily. "I'll be good."

Brows raising in surprise, Gaster stares at him as if trying to decipher a code. It makes Sans start to sweat a little; he should probably put a bit more effort into pretending that everything is normal. Then Gaster clears his throat and quickly looks away. "Of course," he says to the air, pushing himself off the wall and pulling his phone out if his pocket, probably to start remotely disabling cameras and calling the elevator over to the Core. "Never doubted that. Just ‒ pass the time productively until I get back, alright? Practice your attack speed, it's still a bit, y'know, wonky."

"Okay," Sans repeats, not knowing what else to say but trying hard to follow orders. Gaster grumbles unhappily, fingers jabbing hard at the buttons of his phone, but soon he has to actually concentrate on what he's writing and he doesn't have time to be annoyed anymore.

Sans goes back to playing with the various machine parts strewn across the tabletop. Even in his current intimidated state, he finds he can't ignore the opportunity to look at something new when it's right in front of his eyes. So while Gaster carefully coordinates his exit back into the real world, Sans sits and fumbles around with the tiny screws, gears, cables and delicate little circuit boards. Time passes almost unnoticeably like this and when Gaster taps his shoulder about an hour later, Sans feels as if not even a few minutes passed.

"While I'm out there," Gaster begins awkwardly, and Sans leans back a little to stare past him at the now opened window panel, where he can see the Core parts moving and adjusting to let the elevator through, "I might as well bring a few non-essential things back with me. Something other than science to keep us busy. So, uh, is there anything in particular you might want?"

Now it's Sans' turn to warily stare at the other as if they're a puzzle to be solved. Something is off about the way this whole conversation has been going, it's like Gaster is trying too hard to do ‒ something. Sans doesn't know. And it's weird because Gaster is not supposed to be transparent, Sans is not supposed to notice when he's up to something, so why is he suddenly so bad at hiding it? Unless he wants Sans to think that he's bad at hiding whatever it is and make him react in a certain way, except Sans doesn't know what he's hiding ‒ and this line of thinking is really hurting his brain, he should stop.

Gaster is watching him, impatiently waiting for an answer. "Just give me a few ideas here, kid. I'm gonna bring some new books anyways, that's covered. I have no idea where to get toys from, and that'd clutter up the place way too much, so none of that jazz. I could get some more pens and paper? You like to draw, right?" He snaps his fingers as he gets an idea. "You know what, we're going to have to start working with some more sophisticated schematics and blueprints anyways, I'll just teach you how to draw that. Then you can do something fun and it's still useful to us. Yes, I like that, we'll do that."

His soul starts pulsing so insistently it feels like it's clogging up Sans' throat. He stares at Gaster's hands, still busily typing on the phone, and then at the elevator that is slowly moving out of sight to the docking area behind the decontamination chamber. "Can I have a phone?"

Gaster snorts briefly, then looks up at him with one raised eyebrow. "Do you even know what phones are for?"

Sans swallows nervously. At any other time he would have answered "for hacking," but now that would just reveal all his cards immediately. So he shrugs, trying to seem like he doesn't actually care that much. "Alphys had games on hers," he says. "And she could talk to people."

"Yes, talking to people seems like a great idea when the whole kingdom is still in a frenzy looking for us," Gaster drawls and shakes his head. "You're not getting a phone. The newer ones with the games you're talking about are too rare anyways, it's not something that humans throw away all that often." Theoretically, Sans knows that most of the technology in the Underground is built from parts that humans threw away, but there has always been so much technology surrounding him that he sometimes forgets it's actually a luxury for most monsters.

The elevator seems to have finally arrived, as Gaster starts putting on his protective suit for traveling the Core. "I'll see if I can steal an old computer or something," he says over his shoulder and Sans perks up with a smile. "That's not quite as high-profile as stealing a current generation phone. No promises though, I'm trying to attract as little attention as possible and too much high-level equipment going missing in one day would be a tiny bit suspicious." While he screws on his helmet, he stops talking to Sans and begins a more mumbled conversation with himself about maybe having to make multiple trips spaced out over a longer time period.

Sans stares at the small machine parts in front of him, ignoring the sound of the doors to the decontamination chamber sliding open and Gaster's heavy footsteps carrying on the way to the outside. Even if he could somehow get his own protective suit on in time and just slip through the door with him, Sans berates himself bitterly, Gaster still wouldn't allow him into the elevator and would then also definitely know that something was up. So, stupid brain, shut up!

He closes his eyes and rubs his forehead with his knuckles, letting his head drop onto the table. It doesn't take long for the sounds to disappear, for Gaster to step out of the chamber on the other side and enter the elevator (to freedom, Sans brain agitatedly supplies, even though he told it to shut up.) Sans can't keep himself from standing up and walking back out into the lab, watching through the window as Gaster makes his way to the outside. It's not a very good angle to really see anything, so after only a few minutes there is nothing new left to look at and Sans almost mechanically types the command to shut the panels again.

For a while, he actually tries to do as he was told. For some reason, Gaster wants him to be really good at fighting and has been teaching him to compensate for his low attack value with speed instead. But there is only so much Sans can actually do when training on his own, and the fact that he's unsupervised and has other things on his mind right now doesn't help either.

So naturally, it doesn't take long until he's sneaking off to the partition screen again. Why he even bothers sneaking is a mystery, but he can't quite shake the knowledge that he's doing something forbidden. Again. Even though he decided to be good from now on.

The sheet on top of the tank is crumpled and askew. Sans tells himself that that is a good enough reason to come back here, he has to fix that after all to cover his tracks.

Trepidation slowing his steps, he wanders closer to the tank bit by bit. It's darker in this corner of the lab, the blaring lights blocked partially by the partition screen, but luckily it's not actually hard to see. Over the steady, always-present humming noise of the Core, Sans can hear the machinery of the tank, a quiet buzzing and whirring as it keeps the soul inside alive.

He grabs the corner of the white sheet, but doesn't even pretend to start putting it into its intended position again and just pulls it completely aside instead. With a bit of help from a nearby box he carefully climbs on top of the tank, not even fully aware of what is driving him to do this ‒ he just suddenly feels like he should at least get a closer look.

The glass is still almost completely fogged up from the inside. Only a small, clear window remains, too small to see anything other than the soul and its immediate surroundings through it. Sans presses his cheek on the glass, trying to look into the tank sideways and see if there's even a full body in there already, but the glass is too thick and he just gets refracted images of blue light and black machine parts. With a frustrated huff, he sits back up, folds his arms across his chest and stares down at the soul with a glare.

One hand ends up covering his own chest as if moving all by itself. Now that he's taking his time to actually look at it, he realizes that the soul inside the tank is a lot smaller. His own is a little bit larger than his entire hand, while the one in front of him could probably fit right into his palm. Unlike his own, it also doesn't have any light blue scarring on its surface, any tears or rips that had to get stitched back together and still leak an overflow of magic when taxed. It has a smooth, clean surface; even the parts where Gaster already built in connection ports look less _hurt_ , less _ruined_ than his own.

And it's beating. Evenly, healthily, alive. Sans' right hand on his chest cramps up painfully, he clutches at his rough shirt and crumples it up between his fingers. Each happy little pulse of the tiny soul underneath the glass closes up his throat a bit more, drops an ice cold feeling into his stomach that makes his whole body tremble. Driven by the sudden, desperate desire to make the sight disappear, he presses his other hand flat over the glass, covering up the soul and leaving just the soft blue light shining between his fingers.

He didn't expect it to feel like anything other than glass. Maybe it doesn't and he's finally really losing his mind, but he could swear there is a warmth, that he can feel it pulsing against his skin.

Sucking in a sharp, almost panicked breath, he lifts his hand off the glass and hastily climbs down from the tank, stumbling back onto his feet and decidedly turning his back towards the treacherous thing. Without hesitation, he quickly throws the sheet back over it with a few precise motions, smoothing out any crinkles until it looks exactly like it did when he first saw it.

He rubs his left hand against his leg and pretends he can't still feel the beating of a living soul in his palm.

Sans should leave now. He fixed the sheet, everything is well, he should go back to his training like Gaster told him. What he most definitely shouldn't do is to start rifling through the documents next to the tank, because that would be useless, what good would that even do?

It's not a good day for rationality, Sans thinks resigned as he pulls the box of papers towards him and sinks down onto the floor to start reading through them. He doesn't even know what he's looking for! Probably just something, anything to alleviate his fears, something to tell him that his life isn't necessarily in danger just because this thing is here now. Maybe it has even been here right from the start, that would mean he's lived two years already with another soul happily pulsing away in a back room and nothing bad ever came of it.

Except he finds the protocols that mark the beginning of the project as only two months ago. So much for that idea.

Well. That doesn't mean it's supposed to entirely replace him. Gaster might just be in need of a control group, as he has often complained about the lack of one, so creating a soul similar to Sans' and comparing its uncontrolled development to Sans' highly controlled one might just be another step of Project SA-N5.

Except it's called SA-N6. It has a new project name, it's not part of Sans' experiment anymore. And as far as Sans knows, the four projects that came before him were all terminated before his own creation was even initiated. He might have held out a bit longer than them, but ultimately, he, too, is a failure. Hardly more than an opportunity to learn from past mistakes, a guideline for the next attempt.

His teeth begin to chatter as he searches for any other way to look at this, even though the temperature remains at the same slightly too high level it always does.

It might really just be a precaution. The crisis they are trying to solve is no doubt growing more dire the more time passes, so maybe Gaster is just preparing for the theoretical possibility of Sans becoming completely useless. Making a new soul, a new project and storing it away just so he can use it if there finally comes a test that Sans is too weak to handle. It seems like a lot of effort, but Gaster also gets absorbed in projects he deems interesting enough, so it's entirely possible that he just started this one as a theoretical thought experiment and got carried away.

Except... except. Everything stops for a few moments with the next piece of paper, the next piece of information. Except there is date set for activation of Project SA-N6.

Three days from now.

Three days from now, Number Six is in and Number Five is out. Permanently. There is no point having any illusions about that ‒ they're short on resources already with just two people down here, so why would Gaster try to provide for three if he can just get rid of the useless one.

The date, just a small, harmless looking number in the corner of the document, is growing blurry in front of his eyes as his hands begin to shake too much to hold the paper still. There is his expiration date. Maybe that's what was wrong with Gaster in that last conversation: He was trying too hard to be a little nice to him. At least once in his life.

Sans looks over his shoulder at the covered tank, the image of the soul still fresh in his mind. He thinks of that small, healthy, _unbroken_ soul, that _perfect_ soul, and scalding hot hatred burns his insides like never before.

His muscles tremble violently as he jumps to his feet. It doesn't even feel like he's inside his own body anymore, he's just a tight little ball of rage as he pounds his fist against the tank, the skin on his knuckles breaking after two hits. He only stops after five more, when ugly prints of red blood are smeared across the pristine white sheet.

Sans stands back, huffing, shoulders pulled up tensely and hands balled to tiny, ineffective fists. Something is burning in his right eye, the familiar corrosive feeling of pure magic leaking out of him, but this time it's fueled by something more than pain or experiments. It's fueled by ANGER and BETRAYAL and INTENT.

Bones want to follow his magic, want to break into existence and wreak havoc, but something is boiling in him and Sans has never felt like this, he doesn't trust this. The magic is pushed down, he keeps it in, keeps it all contained. Instead, with his own two hands, he reaches out, grabs the tank's thick black power cord ‒

‒ and pulls the plug.

* * *

Looking at the Core doesn't exactly have the same impact it did in the past after being stuck inside for two years. Gaster keeps his eyes forward instead, focused on the goal.

When he steps out of the elevator and gets rid of the stifling suit, it is one hour after end of the night shift. The Core practically runs itself and requires only minimal oversight, so there are never a lot of people here to begin with and during the night it is completely unoccupied, merely surveilled by cameras. Cameras that are now only sending carefully looped footage of empty corridors back to security.

At the other end of the Core surveillance hall, leaning against the door frame with her arms crossed, Dr. Grynn is waiting for him. "You look like shit," she greets him, her usual grin in place and sufficiently feral, considering her rather intense dislike for him.

Gaster walks over to her with an unimpressed raise of his eyebrows. "Yes, by all means, let's focus on such trivialities over all of the other pressing matters. I see your priorities are still in top order." Without further ado, he drops the list into her hand that he prepared. "This is everything I need. Get whatever you can today and store it back by the freight elevator, but some of these are a bit obscure, you'll need to dig around a lot to get them without drawing attention to yourself. Just send those over whenever you have them."

It's very convenient that her personal hatred for him doesn't stop her from supporting his research. Without an outside source like her, the last two years would have been significantly more disagreeable. Freeda would have done it, of course, she has always been one hundred percent behind him, but Asgore knows that of course. That and the fact that she is the current stand-in for the still vacant position of Royal Scientist has her under very close scrutiny, so they have to be extremely careful about initiating direct contact with each other. They've only ever done so four times, each time consisting of barely more than a quick exchange of raw research data.

Which is why the no less than eleven text messages she has sent him during the last two days are both worrying and very, very intriguing.

"So, can I get some input on this?" he asks, as they walk along the hallway and Grynn quickly reads over his list. "It's actually hard to say whether or not this is genuine." And he holds up his phone with Freeda's messages to illustrate what he's talking about, even though Grynn obviously knows. But you never know with these guys, providing visual help for the simplest of things definitely can't hurt.

She looks up at him and shrugs. "For all it's worth, I doubt she's trying to rat you out. She could have done that at any time, no reason to suddenly have a change of heart. Not sure about Asgore's offer, though, I only know what everyone else knows about that."

"Astoundingly helpful as always, Dr. Grynn. What would I do without you confirming the one thing I already know and not supplying any new information about the actual point of interest." He ignores her glare and frowns at the screen of his phone instead. Of course he didn't answer any of the messages and Freeda obviously didn't expect him to, but they were still a deciding factor in making him leave the Core today. If it all does turn out to be a ruse ‒ well, he'll just have to be careful.

"You have that burner phone I told you to get?" The question is rhetorical of course and Grynn hands him the crappy flip phone before he even finishes asking.

"Dialing Freeda already," she says.

It takes a while for Freeda to pick up, likely because she has to get to a safe place first and make sure she isn't being watched by anyone. Even then she picks up without saying anything, just listening and waiting for Gaster to confirm it's really him. Sometimes, he's irrationally proud of how not stupid she is.

"So what are the chances of this offer of cease-fire actually being legit?" Gaster begins at once without wasting time with an introduction. "Because if I end up running straight into one of Asgore's fireballs, I'm blaming you personally."

"It's legit," Freeda answers, immediately getting to the point as well. "He has been broadcasting it on every TV channel and radio station for weeks now in hopes of reaching you like that."

"But for some reason, you only decided to tell me about it two days ago."

"Yes." Of course it's harder to tell over the phone, but Gaster knows her fairly well and he can't find any evidence of a lie in her manner of speaking. "I was only recently brought in to work on this, as the king doesn't entirely trust me. I attempted to solve the problem without involving you, but two days ago I realized I wouldn't be able to do so. Asgore doesn't know I'm contacting you. He suspects that I know how to, but I have been careful not to give him any evidence."

Their conversation stops short when the lights in the hallway suddenly begin to flicker. Slowing his steps, Gaster frowns up at the ceiling and the monitors at the walls, some of which are displaying static. After only a few moments everything returns to normal, and even though there was probably no damage done, this is still happening far too closely to the Core for Gaster's comfort. "What have you people been doing?" he snaps both into the phone and at Grynn walking next to him. "ME isolation near the Core is a top priority, how are we losing power in here?"

"We're keeping it as stable as possible," Grynn says, her eyes darting around in slight worry. "But ME readings have been increasing drastically all over Underground these past few months."

"Then you adjust the fucking numbers and pump more of this shit away from here and into Waterfall." Gaster has a feeling that his eye is twitching, but even if it did it would be entirely justified. He slashes his hand through the air to cut off Grynn's protest that is sure to come. "And yes, of course that will severely damage the area and make it nigh impossible to live there, but you know what else would do that? The Core exploding. Now that would really be unpleasant, for all of Underground and not just one bloody area." He angrily points the phone at Grynn, because even though he should probably be yelling more at Freeda right now, it just feels better if he can actually stare someone down while doing so. "Fix. It."

His lack of an official title seems to have diminished his intimidation skill a nudge, it appears ‒ or maybe that's really just the fact that two years in the Core made him look about twenty years older. One way or the other, Grynn doesn't look nearly as sheepish as she should right now. "We're doing everything we can," Freeda says over the phone and Gaster presses it back to his ear with an unhappy grumble. "Waterfall is already almost entirely quarantined."

"Get rid of the 'almost' and I might give you a stamp of approval." They've reached the stairs and either Gaster is actually getting old or he lacks some serious exercise, because he doesn't remember stairs being quite that exhausting to climb. "Alright, Asgore," he changes the subject, trying to ignore the screaming pain in his knees and his shortness of breath. "He might connect the dots of me contacting him just a few days after he asked you for help, so prepare yourself for that possibility. You have faster access to the cameras in New Home right now, what does it look like?"

It doesn't take long for her to hack the footage. "No security," she informs him mere minutes later. "I see no sign of this being a trap. Also, he doesn't appear to be actually waiting for you. Queen Toriel is with him, I recommend caution."

"Oh really, caution?" Luckily there is always enough breath for a scathing rebuke. "And here I would have just barged right in and kissed everyone hello. Good thing you told me to be cautious, that would have been so awkward otherwise."

"Indeed," is her dry response and Gaster can't help the grin that steals onto his face.

"Keep an eye on the cameras from now on and inform me at once if anything changes." He hangs up unceremoniously and only hesitates for an instant before dialing Asgore's number. While pressing the phone back against his ear, he shoots Grynn a quick glance. "You have a list of things to acquire, Dr. Grynn. Any reason why you're still following me?"

"Other than morbid curiosity over what kind of train wreck this will turn out to be?" She lifts her shoulders. "Not really." Even as she is turning away and heading off again in another direction, he makes sure to glare after her. It's not that he doesn't appreciate her bite, but she became just a tiny bit too insubordinate for his taste.

Quickly but carefully walking along the upper corridors of the CORE facility, always on the lookout for any guards or other monsters, Gaster taps his fingers against the phone case impatiently as His Majesty takes his sweet time to pick up. It gives him time to pop into one or two labs along the way and collect a few things he might need, but then he's already leaving the CORE and he still hasn't gotten an answer by that point. Four times he hangs up out of frustration after listening to the dial tone for three solid minutes, until at the fifth try, he finally hears the long awaited click on the other end and Asgore's extremely throaty "Hello?"

"When you specifically ask for someone to return out of exile just for you," Gaster immediately launches into his rant, "it's generally not recommended that you then ignore all your phone calls."

There is a short, sharp intake of breath on the other end, followed by a moment of stunned silence. Gaster would wait and see for how long the king can keep quiet in utter surprise, but he's almost at New Home and there are some things he wants to have sorted out before he gets there. "Yay, it's me," he drawls into the receiver. "I'm doing jazz hands by the way. Thought I'd tell you so you can properly appreciate the level of sarcasm happening right now. So, I hear your human's dying! Gee shucks, that sure isn't swell at all."

"Gaster," Asgore finally speaks up, still sounding as if he ate a bunch of sandpaper, but at least he's sufficiently alert now. "Thank you. For calling. I understand that it must be difficult."

Gaster laughs dryly. "Well, you're being more amenable than I expected. A little forced, don't you think?"

Even though his blasé attitude definitely managed to make Asgore angry, it's still a very lifeless anger from the sound of it. "Considering that you kidnapped a child from my home and have been hiding him for two years? Yes. Yes, I am trying very hard not to be angry about that right now. My child ‒" and Gaster has to lift the receiver away from his ear and pull a face when he hears the other harshly swallowing a sob, "‒ my child is dying. I, I don't know what else to do."

"I take it it's an ME issue," Gaster quickly tries to bring this to a more professional level. "Only reason I can think of for why you'd believe I could even help here."

"Yes." Even Asgore sounds somewhat relieved at his businesslike tone. "We've kept them as far away from any contaminated areas as possible, but it just kept getting worse. They're ‒ they're in so much pain and I ‒ I can't help ‒"

"A human would obviously be more vulnerable to any kind of magical contamination, seeing as it's such a foreign element to them," Gaster interrupts once more. "You do realize I'm not that kind of doctor, right? And that I study the effects of different kinds of magic on monster souls, not human souls? There is absolutely no guarantee that I'll be able to do anything at all here."

"I know. I know all that. But I need to know that I did," another deep, shaky breath, "that I did everything I could. Please."

"No need to beg, I'm talking to you already, so obviously I'm willing to give it a shot, aren't I? Now, I hate to be that guy, but there is a room and an elephant and a certain need to talk about one of these things. See, if I come over there and do everything I can, no matter how it turns out, I'd really like to be able to just leave at the end of the day and pretend that this never happened. You know, preferably without having to deal with all that pesky 'getting arrested' or alternatively 'being burned to a crisp' stuff."

There is a long, deep sigh on the other end. "Careful," Gaster says, "I can almost feel the self-hatred all the way over here."

"I would not be surprised," Asgore admits quietly. "I am calling for a cease-fire, Gaster, from both sides. If you do this for me, if you at least try to save my Chara, then I promise no harm will come to you today."

"I was kinda hoping for something a bit more substantial than a pinky-promise." Just a few paces ahead lies the last corner before New Home, so Gaster slows down until he's barely moving anymore, all the while keeping an eye on his other phone for any word from Freeda. As long as she doesn't call, he's at least save from guards in the area. "Any way you can back that up with hard proof?"

"What are you expecting?" Asgore's subdued tone of voice is rising back up to quiet desperation. "How can I even prove something like this? If you are not willing to listen to my word, then ‒ I don't know! I don't know what else to give."

Gaster, meanwhile, is rifling through his pockets, his fingers sorting the things he picked up along the way and then closing around what he is looking for. With a grin, he pulls it out and tosses it in the air, just as he reaches the corner and leans against the wall from where he can watch Asgore's house. "Say, Asgore. Do you want to buy a yogurt?"

There is long... _long_ pause.

"Pardon me?"

Gaster tosses the cup around a few more times. "I found one in the break room on my way here, but, you know, I don't really want it anymore. It's," he checks the lid, "blueberry. Not a big fan. So, how about you buy it from me for twenty gold?"

The confusion is practically dripping out of the receiver at this point, but Gaster can also see movement behind the lit windows from afar. Just as he expected, Asgore must have been watching the entrance to his frontyard from the moment their phone call started, waiting for him to show up. "I am afraid I do not understand the ‒ metaphor? Right now?" he says, sounding terribly insecure as he opens the front door and slowly steps outside.

Gaster waves at him with the cup and then motions for him to stay where he is. "That's the amazing thing about this yogurt," he continues with his best salesman voice. "It's completely and utterly real, entirely part of this physical realm and not metaphorical in the slightest! You'd be stupid not to realize this amazing opportunity."

Asgore is a frozen, looming shadow of befuddlement in the distance and Gaster huffs a small sigh. "Come on. We can continue haggling while I take a look at Chara. That would be a lot _safer_ for everyone involved, wouldn't it? If we made sure there was no way to _attack_ anyone?"

And finally, the king realizes what he's getting at, the deep breath he snorts into the phone almost a laugh, right before he hangs up and both of them slowly begin walking across the yard. As soon as they are close enough to hear each other, they stop and Gaster holds up the yogurt with a wide grin. "Would you like to buy this yogurt from me?" he says, carefully enunciating every word to perfection.

"I would be willing to make a deal with you," Asgore answers in the same way, though in his case it's severely lacking in sarcasm.

When he finishes talking, ancient magic surges up around them, locking them into the bargain and disabling both of them from using their magic or being hurt by another's magic for as long as they both intend to continue negotiating a deal.

Gaster knows more of the science behind this phenomenon than most monsters, much the same way he knows more about the ancient magic of official battles and the role of souls and their owner's intent. But even with extensive theoretical knowledge, both of these things remain largely unexplainable by the current state of scientific research. Though it does mean that he is one of the very few monsters who know about the invincibility that is bestowed on vendors and their costumers this way.

"Standing offer is twenty gold," he says. "Want to buy it or not?"

"I don't know," Asgore answers, a tired smile twitching around his lips. "I think I just want to look at it for a while longer."

"Knock yourself out." Gaster tosses him the cup and then they start walking back to the house, pulling the magic with them while Asgore is 'looking at his inventory.'

At the same time, Asgore is eyeing him from the side. "You look ‒" he starts a little insecurely, vaguely gesturing at him with the cup, "‒ um. Older. I suppose."

"Right. Because you're one to talk," Gaster shoots back without any real venom, knowing full well that the king's hunched shoulders, disturbingly haggard face and the deep shadows under his eyes are a result of his worry about the human and therefore a rather new occurrence, unlike Gaster's face, which has worked hard for its amazing zombie-look for the last two years and is very likely to just be stuck like this now.

Asgore's face grows even darker as he frowns intensely at him. "Will you tell me about Sans?" It's really more an order than a question, though not a very insistent one.

With a shrug, Gaster quickly looks to the side and unnecessarily pushes up his glasses. "He's alive, if that's what you're asking." Luckily the hallway is not very long and the room they're walking towards is swiftly getting closer, so there is hardly any time to actually get into this. He of course notices the dangerous mixture of anger and worry ruffling Asgore's feathers next to him, but discussing a two year old crime is fortunately not on top of anybody's priority list right now.

Well, at least it shouldn't be. When they enter Chara's bedroom, Gaster doesn't even have two seconds to assess the situation before an utterly outraged yell rips through the air. "You!" The queen leaves her vigil at the bed of her adopted child with all of the fury of a mother bear, fireballs already burning the air above her palms. Pure instinct has Gaster jerking back a step as the fire roars towards his face, but he quickly gains control again and stops, watching with an only slightly nervous smile as her attack vanishes before even coming close to hitting him.

He performs a graceful bow, deliciously mocking in its perfection. "Your majesty. What a great honor to once again be the target of your lovely attacks. Always makes me feel all warm and tingly inside." Admittedly, he kind of expected her to throw a few more fireballs his way, but to her credit she actually desists immediately, her head whipping around so she can stare down her husband.

"Uuh," the latter begins in an incredibly low voice. "I'm, uh ‒ buying this yogurt from him?"

Queen Toriel, unlike her husband, understands at once what that means. The fire begins burning in her eyes instead, a calm but terrible wrath radiating all around her. Gaster can't help but be impressed.

"Why are you bringing this kidnapper into our home?" she asks, her voice deep and terrifying and her hands balled into fists by her side. "Now, of all times, and while granting him protection!"

Asgore is gesturing with his defensively raised hands, carefully trying to explain the situation. Toriel's shoulders are shaking, her eyes are red and watery, and Gaster quickly pulls himself out of the conversation by tuning it out and concentrating on the bed behind her.

Prince Asriel is sitting on the mattress, watching his parents argue with impossibly wide eyes while clutching the limp hand of his human sibling to his chest. He is not of importance though, this is about the human.

They look different from the last time Gaster saw them. He didn't exactly spend much time with them in the past, nor with live humans in general, but it only takes one glance for him to realize they are indeed dying. Not that he really doubted that ‒ but one should never underestimate the possible depth of other people's stupidity. He's learned to only rarely take anyone's word for anything.

They've lost weight, and a lot of it. The hand that is being tugged on desperately by Asriel is hardly more than bone and even through their shirt he can make out every single rip, their chest rising and sinking with the uneven rhythm of their ragged breath. Red strands cling to the white pillow where their head slowly lulls from side to side, hair falling out in clumps and leaving blank spots of inflamed scalp behind. Two dead eyes stare out of the sunken in pits that are their eyesockets, surrounded by gray, clammy skin marked by a web of blue veins. Gaster can see their dry and cracked lips moving in between labored, wet breaths, mumbling words without any voice to back them up.

"Well," he interrupts the argument still going on behind his back and miraculously they actually stop to listen, "there are bad cases of ME poisoning and then there's ‒ this. Should have called me months ago, fucking morons." He fully expects the queen to try and roast him again, but to his endless surprise he only hears her choke on a desperate sob, followed by a thumping sound as if she fell to the floor.

"Are you a doctor?" the prince asks, weak and whimpering voice and seemingly unaware of the tears that are continuously leaking out of his eyes. "Can you help them?"

"Nah, don't think so," he answers without delay, seeing no reason to sugarcoat anything here and drag this out for much longer than necessary. Still, he does step closer to the bed and leans over the dying human, quickly checking their vitals. They are already attached to one standard ME monitor, which is displaying absolutely damning levels, but he still pulls out a few injections and the portable soul scanner he snatched from the labs on the way here.

"Do not touch my child," he can hear Toriel's protest behind him, but she doesn't actually move from where she's kneeling on the floor, her voice scratchy from grief. Asgore's deep baritone joins in, murmuring calming nonsense to her, but he too is choking on sobs now and Gaster knows he doesn't need to worry about those two.

He works quickly, fully aware that there are only minutes of life left for Chara. Human souls are harder for the equipment to pick up, usually only clearly visible to monsters when in battle or after a human's death, but he knows how to calibrate the scanner to at least get an average quality image out of it. Just as he was hoping, the soul itself still looks completely intact, even though the body is practically falling apart under his hands. He will never not be fascinated by this human split between body and soul, this curious independency, especially in death.

If only human deaths weren't this messy. His hands are sticky with coppery smelling blood and cold sweat when he pulls away, depositing the scanner on the end table and discreetly wiping his hands clean on his coat. He takes a large step backwards before looking back at the king and queen.

Toriel is kneeling in the middle of the room, her back and shoulders straight and tense, her bloodshot eyes locked onto the human's face with a look of pure, desperate horror. Protectively bent over her stands Asgore, his arms encircling her head and gently pressing the side of her face against his stomach, obviously trying to shield her from the view. But her finger are dug deep into his arms, keeping him from pulling her closer, and he stares down at the top of her head, pearly tears running down his face and landing in her thick white hair.

The sight, for a moment, almost makes Gaster feel something.

Decisively, he pushes his glasses up his nose and clears his throat. "Yeah, they're a goner. I give them like, five minutes, tops." It's truly a testament to how little hope the pair had from the beginning that they don't even react to his words. For a moment, he wonders if they heard him at all, but then Asgore's massive shoulders begin to shake, his head dropping lower until his blond mane covers his grief stricken face. Toriel is frozen, her hands tightening around her husband's arms so much it has to be painful for both of them.

Prince Asriel cries completely silently. He never let go of Chara's hand and now he slowly crawls onto the bed. Trembling weakly, he lies down on his side next to them, shuffling closer and gently pulling them towards him with his short little arm tenderly wrapped around their neck. It almost appears as if Chara moves into the embrace, their head turning in his direction on the pillow, until they both lie on their sides, their foreheads touching lightly and Chara's hand held tightly between their chests.

"It's alright, Chara," he whispers to them, his quiet words ringing loudly through the complete silence of the room. "I ‒ I won't be angry with you if you let go." His face is wet with tears, but there is hardly even a waver in his small voice. His thumb is stroking soothing circles into the clammy skin on Chara's cheek. "I know it hurts. You don't have to stay determined." Asriel's lips are trying so hard to keep up his little comforting smile, but they are quivering and it almost slips off his face, right before he saves it with a last bit of steely resolve. Gaster doubts that Chara can even see it, their eyes are dark and dead already while they continue painfully gasping for breath, growing weaker and weaker with every attempt.

Something about the prince's words must have resonated with Asgore and Toriel, because they now slowly pull themselves out of their paralysis, their arms slung around each other so it's completely unclear who is supporting who, and they walk past Gaster to sink down on the edge of the bed together. Toriel buries her face in her son's hair and gently lays her hand on Chara's head. Asgore leaves one arm wrapped around his wife's waist and with the other hand starts stroking Chara's back.

Gaster wishes he could step outside, but if he is to benefit from the protection of his and Asgore's bargain, he needs to stay with him. Even if he doesn't understand the depth of emotion involved in losing a child, he still recognizes it as the kind of event that he should never be a part of, given his tendency to be an insensitive fuckbag. So he instead resigns himself to waiting silently in a corner of the room.

He tries not to listen, but it is still so painfully quiet that every whisper is like a scream, every "You'll be alright, Chara," every "We love you, Chara," every "You'll get to see the flowers, Chara," echoing through the tiny room and becoming impossible to ignore.

There is no clock anywhere, but it feels like it's taking longer than it should. The minutes stretch along, the ragged breathing almost fading out, only to suddenly pick up again with a jolt, with a twitch of bony fingers and a fluttering of red eyelashes. Gaster has never seen such a slow death, has never been able to watch as the soul, instead of springing out of the body on the second of its death, instead slowly makes its way to the surface, a red glow inside Chara's chest gradually growing larger and larger. Step by step, minute after minute, the soul tries to leave its confines behind, every once in a while yanked back by _something_ , by a misplaced desire to stay, to keep living.

The human's body begins to tremble when their soul finally phases through the skin on their chest, just a little bit, just enough for one crown of the little heart to finally be clearly visible, and tears and blood are spilling out of Chara's eyes. Asriel's sobs are loud now, as he shifts impossibly closer and presses his forehead to theirs until the blunt little horns on his head are digging into their skin. They gasp for breath together, shaking and clinging to each other and making it impossible to tell from the outside which one of them is dying and which one isn't.

In the end, he only sees the red soul for a split second. It finally slips out of its broken body, shortly hovering in the air above it and drifting forward on the wave of the child's last breath. Gaster's hand is in his pocket in an instant, but before he even has the chance to think about doing anything, a scream of soulpiercing grief rips out of Asriel's throat as he scrambles for the lifeless body of his sibling, clutching it close with shaking arms and no intent to let go.

Gaster chokes on air when he understands what's happening. "Pull him back!" he yells at Asgore, but the man has his face buried in the blankets on the bed, shoulders shaking violently and hands digging into the mattress, while Toriel has her hands pressed to her face, rocking back and forth and wailing as her world ends.

Asriel's hands close around the soul. He is crying, shaking, screaming, but there is purpose in his movements as he pulls the red heart towards his own chest.

In a flash of white, it disappears.

When the king and queen realize that something is wrong, it is already too late. The white light grows blinding, bathing the whole room in magic, a deafening ringing sound canceling out their sounds of shock and confusion. Gaster throws an arm over his eyes, but the piercing light still has him blinking stars out of his field of view, even after it quickly dies down again. He can hear Asgore's shaky "Asriel?" and Toriel's terrified "Oh God, no, no please" and deep, panicked breathing as the only answer.

He has never seen a monster that absorbed a human soul. It happens so incredibly rarely that hardly anything is even known about the phenomenon, so when he finally manages to open his eyes and take a look at what's happening, he can't help the excitement bubbling in his stomach. Asriel, if one can even still call him that, is standing almost as tall as Asgore now, a nearly grown-up version of himself, his horns sticking far out of his white hair and curling backwards above his head. His blue, round eyes have turned black and sharp, red pupils still glimmering with tears and there are two harsh, black cracks stretching along his cheekbones.

He is clutching Chara's lifeless, now seemingly tiny body in his arms as he stumbles towards the door, fighting to keep his balance in this new form of his. Gaster hastily steps to the side to let him through, though he doesn't even appear to see any of them; there is a desperate, determined resolve in his eyes, a goal that he is chasing now and that's overshadowing everything else.

Asgore and Toriel are holding onto each other, an overwhelming mixture of emotions flickering across their faces, and apparently it falls to Gaster to somehow get them up and going again. He unceremoniously walks over to them and pulls them up as best he can, but luckily they readily follow his ineffectual tugging at their sleeves.

Only when they reach the hallway and catch a glimpse of Asriel disappearing down the stairs do they seem to wake from their trance and panicked worry takes over their features as they hurry after their transformed son with newly found intent. "He'll cross the barrier," Toriel says, her voice raw and shaky as they all run towards the throne room. "They'll ‒ they'll see him. Asriel!" she suddenly yells down the corridor and Gaster flinches and rubs his ears. "Asriel, wait! Please!"

Gaster doesn't bother to tell her how pointless it is. He saw Asriel's expression with his own eyes ‒ there is no way a bit of yelling from worried parents will stop him from whatever he is trying to do. "What does he want beyond the barrier?" he asks instead.

Asgore jerks his head around to look at him as if he forgot he was even there. "Flowers," he stammers weakly. "Chara ‒ wanted to see them..."

"Seriously?" Gaster bristles, no longer able to keep his insensitivity locked away in the face of such idiocy. "Your son decides to absorb a fucking human soul and harvest its magical power of puberty, apparently, for the sake of seeing some flowers? Are you fucking kidding me right now!"

Luckily, they don't really pay attention to him. Gaster falls behind as Asgore and Toriel rush through the throne room in panic ‒ when he catches up to them, right at the barrier, it is obviously too late already. Asgore stands with his hands pressed to his chest, wide eyes watching as his wife fights her way as far into the spell of the barrier as she possibly can, only to be repeatedly pushed back by the ancient magic and then running forward again in a sad exercise of futility.

This really didn't go the way he expected it to, Gaster thinks. He just hopes that neither of the two notices that the bargain spell has worn off, since Asgore left the cup behind in Chara's room, but it is rather obvious that they have completely different things on their minds right now.

When Toriel begins screaming at Asgore to do something, to try and lift the spell or to somehow cross through it and get their son back, Gaster decides that he's had enough drama for the day. He retreats back into the throne room, taking care to avoid the patches of damp soil so he doesn't ruin his shoes, and leans against the wall to watch the entrance to the barrier. It's still not quite clear to him what this whole flower business is about, but it at least doesn't sound like it should take up too much time, so he's hoping that Asriel will do whatever he wants to in the human world and then return. If he doesn't, then Gaster might have to eat his own coat in frustration over this enormous waste of his time.

But finally, something goes right again. Not even half an hours passes before he hears the voices beyond the throne room change, the rage and panic subsiding and instead switching back to mourning cries and desperation. He pushes off the wall to hurry back, but he hasn't even halfway crossed the room when Asriel, flanked by his parents on either side, steps into the room.

He is still holding on to Chara's body, but it is now a strain on him he can barely hide. Blood is running down his arms, spilling forth from hundreds of tiny, round holes in his flesh. One of his horns is broken off, his left eye is just a mass of red, dripping flesh and the cracks on his face are deeper now, longer, filled with blood.

In morbid fascination, Gaster watches him take his last few, stumbling steps towards the grass, where he drops to his knees. His head sinks down, lolling lightly to the side, pulled by the uneven weight of his horns and for just a second, Gaster can see his skull actually shifting apart, splinters of bone pulling on the bleeding, ripping skin.

And then, in the blink of an eye, the prince's dust spreads across the garden.

A white and red soul floats in the air, splitting back into two as Toriel's cries echo through the hall. Her fingers are digging into the soil, clawing at her son's dust as his white soul bursts into pieces above her and the red one remains.

This time, Gaster is fast enough. The soul container from his pocket materializes around the floating red heart and neither Asgore nor Toriel have any capacity to notice anything beyond the white dust clinging to the king's flowers. He can walk back out of the throne room without hurry, their desperate sobs following him all the way up the stairs.

Then, it's only the silence of the night that clings to him as he walks away from New Home, a glass vial with a warm, glowing red soul in his pocket and a smile on his face.

He got exactly what he came here for.

* * *

Gaster waits for probably far longer than he should. He takes his time to check on the supplies Grynn gathered while he was busy and starts sending the first fully packed freight elevator back to the Core. Then he wanders the empty facility, packs a few more things he might need ‒ he even finds an old laptop for Sans.

Then, after about an hour of just dallying about, Asgore finally calls. Furiously so.

"I know you have it," he yells ‒ yells! ‒ into the phone, his deep voice actually breaking after likely crying for the past hour. "You will return my child's soul or I swear to all that is holy, I will not rest before I find and end you!"

Gaster holds the phone away from his ear and just looks at it, unimpressed. "Asgore," he starts, as gently as he is physically able to. "You're grieving right now, so you're not being rational. You know that even if I give it back to you, Chara will remain dead, right? What do you want to do, keep their soul around to stare at every day, constantly reminding you of what you lost?"

And apparently one can actually still keep crying, even after doing hardly anything else for hours on end. Gaster listens to him, calmly, as he tries to form words but fails miserably, choking out sobs and whimpers.

It sounds pitiful and he'd be lying if he said he didn't feel somewhat sorry for the man. "Look," he begins again after a few minutes of this, "you've been putting restraints on my research ever since I started and see where it got us. ME is killing Waterfall, it's starting to kill the Core ‒ it killed your children. I'm not saying that's your fault, or even that I could have definitely prevented it if you had let me do everything I wanted to, but don't you think it's time you dropped the red tape? Don't you think Chara would have wanted their soul to contribute to preventing horrible deaths like this in the future?"

It's hard to say from just the distorted sounds on the other end of the line whether Asgore is still crying or fuming in anger right now, but either way words still seem to elude him. "All the other humans were killed by monsters," Gaster continues, "so their souls don't contain the specific magic I need anymore; it got transferred to the monster souls. Chara's is the only soul that's still entirely intact, since they weren't murdered, and it's the only opportunity I have to research human magic in its natural domain. You can't possibly understand how important that is."

He is completely prepared to launch into a long and detailed explanation of why this is important, but Asgore surprises him as he suddenly speaks up astoundingly clearly: "One condition."

Intrigued, Gaster sits back in the chair he's been waiting in and crosses his legs. "I'm listening."

"You're right." He doesn't think he's ever heard Asgore sounding so entirely hopeless. "Having their soul here... it doesn't bring them back. It will only hurt. If you need it that badly, take it. But give me Sans in return."

Gaster shakes his head with a startled laugh. One unexpected turn of events after another today!

"He is ‒ he is the only one I can still save," Asgore continues hoarsely. "Please. If you have the soul, you don't need him anymore. Just ‒ please, just let him go. I promise, if you do, I will not continue looking for you. I will leave you in peace to do whatever you have to do."

Lost in thought, Gaster taps his fingers against the phone. Asgore is waiting for his answer with bated breath and after a few seconds, Gaster sighs loudly. "Okay."

Now it's Asgore's turn to be stunned. "Truly?" His voice breaks again on this one word. "You promise?"

"Yeah, whatever." Gaster waves his hand. "Agreed. I'll call you to let you know where you can pick him up." Without waiting for an answer, he hangs up. For a moment, he just looks at the phone in consideration ‒ before he swiftly breaks it in half and drops it into the nearest bin.

It's about half an hour later again when he finally returns to the control hall, ready to go back to the Core. Just like Grynn was waiting for him when he stepped out of the elevator before, Pollard is now standing nervously next to the decontamination chamber.

"Honestly," Gaster greets him, and the man jumps violently, "I didn't actually think you'd have the balls to come. So, kudos, I suppose."

Pollard is not wearing a labcoat, just a really boring plaid shirt and some worn looking jeans. He's lost all of his hair by now and there are permanently dusty patches all over his skin where the radiation is slowly and painfully decomposing him. His eyes are almost completely yellow and he's lost so much weight that Gaster is surprised he can even stand upright. The wrinkles on his face have tripled since the last time he saw him, so he looks about fifty years older.

Not being the one who aged most horribly these last two years immediately lifts Gaster's spirits again.

Pollard's voice is terribly scratchy when he starts talking, but it somehow sounds much better than the permanently whiny tone he had before. "They're not letting me work in the labs anymore," he says. "Too much of a health hazard. As if that isn't my own fucking decision to make."

"Someone's bitter." Gaster steps past him and pulls two environmental suits out of the cupboard, holding one out to Dr. Pollard. "You coming, then?"

To his credit, the man barely hesitates for more than a second. When he takes the suit with shaking hands, he looks up at Gaster almost pleadingly. "We can still solve this, right? I ‒ I can still save my family this way. Right?"

"Well, there's no guarantee we'll get it done before you kick the bucket," Gaster answers with his own personal brand of brutal honesty. "But you can definitely help speed it up."

That's apparently everything Pollard needs to hear, because he nods in relieved understanding, puts on his suit and follows Gaster into his secret lab.

They don't talk at all during the elevator drive. Pollard is stunned into awed silence by it all and usually Gaster would use this opportunity to show off a bit, but he is unreasonably tired after today and is also not exactly looking forward to returning to the lab. It was good to be away from it for a while. He's made sure that the supplies he collected will have the increased number of people completely covered for at least three more years, so he won't have any real excuse for leaving again anytime soon.

"So," Pollard carefully speaks up when they finally reach the docking station and walk along the hallway to the decontamination chamber, "you haven't left this place for two years?"

"Nope," he answers, while the air around them is being cleansed loudly and he goes ahead and takes his helmet off.

"Wow. That's ‒ that's some really good resource management."

Gaster snorts. "Considering that I had planned on not leaving for at least five years, it's actually quite the opposite. Things don't always go as planned, not even when I plan them." The doors swish open and he walks back into his beautiful prison of a laboratory.

In a brutal continuation of today's theme of things happening unexpectedly, Gaster can barely take two steps before there is a sudden _~ting_ and he is slammed backwards against the wall.


	12. Knock Knock

_**I put a little warning at the end of this chapter, so please scroll all the way down and check that if you have any triggers. Thank you and enjoy :)**_

* * *

 **Knock Knock**

Sans has one single, tiny window of opportunity. His attacks are not powerful enough to hurt Gaster, especially since he doesn't really want to, and he can't keep his grip on the man's soul for too long while running. All he has is the moment of confusion after his first attack, the time Gaster needs to get back on his feet and fully grasp the situation. So immediately after slamming him against the wall with tenfold increased gravity, Sans bolts for the exit.

As expected, he is swiftly hit with the burning feeling of orange magic on his soul, prompting him to keep moving, but luckily the direction is still up to him. A swirling wave of white tesseracts crashes into his path, trying to force him to move back, but Sans grinds his teeth and runs straight into it.

Speed and agility are the two things they have trained to death, so Gaster doesn't even try to fool around. He's throwing out his fastest, most complicated attacks with the most unpredictable patterns. Sans dodges them all, weaving through the bullets that miss him by nothing more than a hair's breadth. The doors to the decontamination chamber begin to slide shut again, but Sans quickly lifts his arm, bones flying forth and slamming into the gap, the doors creaking dangerously as they're forced to stay open. His soul is pounding in his chest as he jumps forward, only one step away from freedom.

The very next moment, he slams head first into a milky white wall. In a matter of seconds, it materialized right in front of him to block the exit and Sans stumbles back. He has no time to find his bearings again; the orange magic is lifted from his soul and in that very instant, someone yanks him back by the collar and then immediately grabs him in an unforgiving headlock.

Sans can't even really fight back. The shock of the attack has him freezing up at first and then when he tries to struggle, kicking out with his feet and pulling on the arm across his throat, the grip quickly shifts: Without warning, his feet are kicked out from under him and he is pressed face first into the floor, a heavy weight slamming into his back and keeping him down.

A small sob escapes him, just before he bites down on his lower lip and then goes completely limp.

That is it, then. The element of surprise was his only advantage. His summoned bones between the doors crack and crumble to dust as the exit finally shuts, from now on only opening again with the right code and therefore cutting off his access for eternity.

Breathless curses waft through the air, distorted by Sans' bad ear, and when he turns his head a little to try and see, he can just barely make out Gaster as he struggles to his feet, holding onto the wall for balance. His eyes are burning with orange rage, but Sans doesn't have the energy to be afraid anymore, doesn't even care enough to wonder who this other person is that just suddenly appeared.

He is done. All he can do now is lie here and wait.

Gaster finally manages to push himself off the wall. His long black coat was disarrayed by Sans' attack and now gets tangled with his legs at his first few steps, until he angrily brushes it away with wide, uncoordinated movements. Despite the wrath radiating from his eyes and his posture, his face stays surprisingly neutral. "Alright," he says, staring down at Sans coldly, his voice like steel. Then his eyes shift up to the person holding Sans and he waves his hand dismissively, his gestures slowly losing their choppy, anger fueled edge and reverting back to their usual air of disinterest. "I believe that's enough."

The person hesitates for a moment, then lets Sans go very carefully. Just those movements alone poke a spot in Sans' memory and when he looks up a tiny bit, he isn't even all that surprised to see Pollard standing over him, looking much worse for wear and sweating profusely from the little bit of sudden exercise. Sans stays where he is, but he glances back at the exit to see that the wall he ran into is actually a huge, slightly translucent shield hovering in the air. Only when it disappears with a gesture from Pollard does Sans realize that's what the man's bullets look like. Sans almost wants to laugh when he realizes that touching it didn't even lower his HP at all ‒ he was stopped by probably the weakest bullet that could possibly exist.

His attention snaps back to Gaster when two shiny, black shoes enter his field of view and then the creator drops into a low crouch, one spindly hand digging into Sans' neck and harshly pulling him up a little. "Honestly, buddy," he starts with a cold smile, "I'm mostly just disappointed that you thought this was actually going to work. What was the plan here, hm? Make it to the elevator ‒ and then what?" Chuckling lightly, he shakes his head mockingly.

Sans had been going for the freight elevator, actually. The one that had arrived just a few hours prior, following a pre-programmed path that had been displayed on the monitors in the office. Sans might not know how to hack anything, but he knows how to activate a code that's already part of the program. And the freight elevator was unmanned, no one had to plug in their phone and tell it where to go, so he's pretty sure it can actually be activated with a few simple button presses once inside. The entire lab is mainly constructed to make entering it impossible for the uninitiated, but there aren't half as many failsafes in place for leaving it, since it wasn't actually supposed to be a prison.

Well. Sans isn't going to tell Gaster any of that. So he just does the best thing he can do right now: Nothing at all. With an empty grin, he looks up at Gaster with half-lidded eyes and waits for his judgment.

An annoyed sneer flashes over Gaster's face for a second, before he abruptly drops him back to the floor and straightens up again.

"So," Pollard carefully inserts himself, dragging the word out with a throaty voice that sounds like it hurts, "is this a regular thing, now?"

"Nope, this is new," Gaster answers with false cheer, beginning to walk back and forth while Sans slowly pushes himself into a sitting position. "Seems you got here just in time for the real party." The creator looks tired, frustrated as he thinks about what to do and Sans doesn't feel sorry. He folds his legs, shoulders hunched and elbows balanced on his knees, knowing full well that he should probably worry a lot about what's going to happen next ‒ but it's not like worry will actually do anything to avoid the inevitable, so whatever.

"Why did he do that, then?" Pollard asks, and yep, he still does that thing where he doesn't talk like Sans is a real person that's actually listening.

Gaster frowns to himself as his pacing intensifies. "Well, we had a bit of a falling out. Can't say I expected this dramatic of a reaction, to be honest." He stops to stare at Sans, the thoughts likely rattling in his mind.

Sans figures it's no use, he'll be found out sooner or later anyways, so he points to the partition screen in the corner. "Found the soul," he says shortly.

"What soul?" Pollard asks nervously, but Gaster's eyes just widen for a second as he lets the information sink in. Then he abruptly turns on his heel and hurries over to his private experiments. While Pollard runs after him and drags Sans along, his expression clearly states that he has an idea what's going on and doesn't like it all.

They round the corner of the screen just as Gaster looks up from the observation monitor on the tank, his face now finally displaying all the rage he was trying to mask with a smile before. "You fucking unplugged it?!" he spits at Sans, practically flying to the other side of the tank and beginning to type in orders.

Sans shuffles his feet and looks off to the side, a bout of shame coming over him as he thinks back to his tantrum. "Yeah," he mumbles, then looks up again and lifts his shoulders, hands buried deep in his pockets. "But I plugged it back in. So ‒ it's good, right?"

It's still a bit hard to understand what drove him, both when he tried to terminate the soul and when he changed his mind. It hadn't even stayed offline for a whole minute before such an immense wave of guilt had suddenly washed over him that he nearly tripped over his feet in his haste to run back. He felt a lot better after plugging it back in and watching the machine whir to life again, all the little lights switching on and the monitors going back to displaying their statistics.

Gaster's fist crashes down on top of the tank and Sans jumps in surprise. The creator is so angry he is baring his teeth and spitting tiny flecks of orange magic as he talks. "You can't just interrupt a life support program and then start it back up like nothing happened," he yells, punching in multiple codes while Pollard on the other side hectically clears a small surface on a table and then runs back into the lab looking for equipment. "It's a fucking soul, not a computer!"

A heavy feeling of dread settles into Sans' stomach, a sudden lightheadedness overwhelming him as the lid of the tank pops open with a small hissing sound, white fog rolling out onto the floor. Gaster doesn't wait for it to open up further on its own and instead rips it open manually, his thin arms shaking from the strain. Pollard returns, pulling a cart filled with syringes and life support equipment. He almost runs Sans over, who hastily steps out of the way, knees shaking and hands growing clammy with sweat.

He knows from the documents he read that the soul is young, only two months, and even with an artificial aging program in place it couldn't have grown much of a body in that short amount of time. Sans knows that.

He still feels bile rising to his throat when Gaster lifts a creature out of the tank that's barely even the size of one of his long, bony hands. Clear, gooey incubation fluid clings to its leathery brown skin and Gaster only cleans off the worst of it before hastily wrapping it in a thick blanket and laying the tiny, unmoving thing on the cleared table.

Unmoving. Sans stumbles back until he hits the wall, shaking violently. If it's dead, it's his fault. Then he killed a ‒ not even a baby, really, something even smaller and even more vulnerable, something that did nothing wrong and never even got a chance to live at all. Sans wraps his arms around his stomach and bends forward, shaking and swallowing hard as he fights not to throw up.

Only the baby's soul and head remain uncovered by the blanket and Gaster is examining it with his hands, looking for movement, for breath, for anything. The deep blue light of the soul is still there, but weak and flickering. "Fuck," Gaster says, sounding less angry and more like he's stating a fact now that he's concentrating on his project. He snaps his fingers at Pollard. "Breathing tube."

"This is the smallest size we have," Pollard answers worriedly as he hands him a thin tube connected to a respirator. Gaster looks at it, hisses unhappily through his teeth and puts it aside before reaching for a small scalpel instead. "Tracheotomy then."

Sans is almost glad that the two are mostly blocking his view of the table, because he really can't look away on his own. He sees Gaster's hand moving quickly and efficiently, catches a glimpse of a bleeding hole in the baby's thin neck and has to clutch his stomach harder as they wrangle the tube inside. A monitor is swiftly connected to the tiny soul and immediately starts beeping with urgent alarm sounds, displaying critically blinking numbers and jittery lines jumping all over the place.

It takes over half an hour for things to calm down, half an hour of Gaster and Pollard sorting through syringes, watching the displays, injecting one odd liquid after another into the soul and occasionally yelling at each other when things don't go as they intended. For an excruciatingly long two minutes, the blue light disappears completely. A flat, beeping line runs across the monitor and everything goes blurry in front of Sans' eyes while Gaster uses one finger to carefully massage the dull little soul, trying to prompt it back into moving on its own. When it does start unevenly pulsing again, the relief makes Sans slide down to the floor and hug his knees to his chest.

Pollard sinks into a nearby chair with an exhausted huff the moment most of the numbers finally look at least acceptable. Gaster pulls off his gloves and slams the tank shut using his elbow, stopping for just a moment to take a deep breath.

Then he turns to Sans. "I take it you're overjoyed right now," he drawls. "Because I seriously doubt that thing will survive until tomorrow. Goal achieved, hm?"

Sans shakes his head until he's dizzy. "I didn't, I didn't mean ‒" he stammers, breath hitching and soul burning in his chest. "That's not what I ‒"

"‒ not what you were trying to do?" Gaster continues for him. "Except that's exactly what you were trying to do, kid. Come here." Sans just shrinks back, curling in further on himself. With a sigh, Pollard gets back on his feet and pulls Sans up by his arm, dragging him over to Gaster, who picks him up and stands him on a box so he can look at the tabletop. One of Gaster's hands tightly holds Sans' head in place so he can't turn away. "Look at it."

If looking at the little soul was hard while it was still in the tank, then Sans doesn't even know what it is right now. It made him angry because it was so perfect, so unlike his own, and now he starts gasping for breath, trying to keep the sobs at bay when he sees how wilted, how colorless it became in just this short amount of time. The body around it is just round joints and spidery limbs, skin stretched over it so thin that he can see blue veins lazily growing thicker and thinner again as blood and magic flows through them. The tube that's pumping air through its trachea directly into its lungs appears brutally big in comparison. Its face is mostly covered in bandages now and all sans can see are a button nose half the size of one of his fingernails and a tiny, slack, lipless mouth.

Sans lifts a hand, his whole body trembling with the effort of keeping his suddenly overwhelming guilt quiet, and lets it hover over the soul, not daring to actually touch. Feeling that same calming warmth radiate from it as before finally makes him crumble; the hand drops back to his side and tears flood his eyes.

Gaster points to the warm, slowly pulsing, but now paperthin looking soul. "You did that." There are marks of light blue on its once smooth surface where it was hit by syringes too big for a soul that size. "That's your fault. Doesn't fucking matter if you changed your mind halfway through or not."

Sans isn't even really crying, not the way Penny did or even the way he did at night next to Chara's bed. There is not enough breath for real sobs, his chest feels tight and frozen on the inside and all he can do is pathetically clamber for any wheezing mouthful of air, only to shakily release it again all while clutching both hands over his own soul.

Gaster watches him, still holding him in place so he can't turn his head away. "Yeah," he says, voice dry and scratchy. "Funny how murdering children actually sucks, hm?"

Just as Pollard tries to interfere with a timid "Is that really necessary," Sans suddenly feels himself choking out a desperate laugh. He violently jerks his head to the side, the hand likely loosening more out of surprise than anything else, and glares up at Gaster. "You ‒ you fucking h-hypocrite," he bites out through bared teeth and hitching breath. He grins painfully and it makes him feel crazy and dangerous. "As if you actually c-care about _that_." Another breathless laugh tumbles out of him and it makes it easier to stop crying, even while Pollard stares at him from the other side of the table as if he's never seen anything like him before. "You're just mad 'cause I broke your experiment."

"Well, duh," is Gaster's obnoxious answer, but the deepening lines on his forehead pretty clearly suggest that he's more annoyed than he's trying to let on. "That doesn't mean I don't get to whack you over the head with the results of your actions. Or does my not caring about those things somehow absolve you from having to deal with the consequences of your emotional hissy fits? What a very convenient interpretation of morality."

"I, uh," Pollard suddenly speaks up in the background, before clearing his throat decidedly and adopting a more confident tone of voice. "I really think our priority right now should lie with trying to save that soul, not in berating each other."

Gaster snorts and dismisses him with an uncaring gesture. "Yeah, sure, you just keep living in that fabricated reality of yours where anybody actually cares about what you think."

Pollard, however, is already standing up again to check the stats on the monitors and presumably write down treatment plans. "I didn't come down here with you so you'd have one more person to ridicule," he says sharply. "And you are not my superior anymore, so it doesn't matter if you want to hear my input or not, I'm going to give it anyway. If we want to keep this soul functional, we need to focus on its care immediately."

"Pollard," Gaster chuckles, rubs his eyes under his glasses and then lazily points in the direction of the little soul, "you're not blind yet, as far as I'm aware, so I know you can see those stats. It can't go back into the tank like this, no matter how we calibrate it, and keeping it alive out here is going to be a fulltime job for at least the next few months."

With a frown, Pollard turns and looks at him. "Well, yes, but that doesn't mean we can't do it."

"When did I say it wasn't possible? Is it really that hard to just listen to the words that are coming out of my mouth instead of the assumptions your own head supplies?" Pollard watches with confusion and a hint of frustration as Gaster checks a few of the monitors himself, grabs the chart out of Pollard's hand and flips through the notes he made. Sans, meanwhile, is slowly retreating from the table, returning to pressing his back to the wall and watching with growing apprehension.

Gaster hisses quietly as he drops the chart on the table. "This was supposed to be a side project, a backup plan. It was supposed to stay in the bloody tank so it wouldn't use up resources."

"That's not true!" Sans shouts, making Pollard flinch and Gaster take a long, forcibly calm breath as he turns towards him. "I saw your notes, I know you were going to activate it."

"Ah. Let me guess, that was your entire reason for throwing this ridiculous tantrum?" He is gesturing wildly, quickly losing his patience with the entire conversation, his hands adding in about a hundred more swearwords that he apparently doesn't have the time to say out loud. "And judging from how extreme of a reaction it was, you, what ‒ thought that I would get rid of you? Yes, obviously, let's just dump the one soul in the entire Underground that is trained in blue magic, the only soul that even has traces of cyan magic, and replace it with a fucking baby that can't do shit and that we have no data on, meaning we'd have to once again backtrack years of research while the ME out there is slowly eating its way towards the Core. Seriously, how do you people always come up with these absolutely astonishing brain farts!"

A mocking laugh falls out of his mouth, but it's harsh and unamused, the fingers of his left hand twitching impatiently as he quickly signs to himself about formulas and equations that are too fast and complicated for Sans to follow. "Activating the project," he continues out loud, proving that he's currently operating on at least two completely different levels of thought, "does not include taking it out of the bloody tank and having it run around the lab. In this case, I would have simply partially woken it, tested basic cognitive and bodily functions and then put it back to sleep so it would keep maturing on its own. It would have stayed in there as an emergency backup, in case we ever needed to test high risk experiments for possible lethality before trying them on you. This project was initiated to potentially _reduce_ the risk of your death. Please note the irony."

Sans doesn't respond. He's staring down at his own feet, the sight blurry in front of his eyes. Everything, every word and every new reveal or accusation is just too much, he's just too exhausted.

Gaster's fingers start drumming on the tabletop, right next to the baby, which from Sans' perspective looks just like bunch of white blankets rolled up in a tight ball. "It would be possible to keep it alive," Gaster concedes, but his resigned tone makes Sans lift his head again in worry. "Maybe. And after today, I really can't afford to blow all our resources on a 'maybe.' At this point, scrapping this," he almost helplessly gestures at the small being for a second before deciding on a word, " _project_ and simply starting a new one would in comparison only put about a tenth of strain on our energy and supplies."

The ice cold feeling in Sans' gut returns with a vengeance at that, he pushes off the wall and shouts "You can't!" with a rough and jittering voice, his soul pulsing hard in his chest until it becomes painful. "Don't, don't kill it, it didn't do anything wrong!"

"Of course it didn't, you did," Gaster snaps at him. "I'm just left dealing with the fallout."

Pollard breathes out hard through his teeth and rubs his scalp nervously. "It seems extreme," he simply says, not looking at the little project in its bed of blankets at all.

"Yes, because it is," Gaster sighs in frustration. "Surprise, extreme situations require extreme actions to be taken. You're not in your comfy labs anymore, Dr. Pollard, we're in a bloody airtight container swimming in the middle of an ocean of lava. We only have a brief respite before the king realizes I lied to him again, do you really think acquiring new supplies will somehow become easier after that? Freeda is most definitely out of a job and Grynn barely stands a chance either, so our inside sources will soon be gone too and this might surprise you, but I don't actually have an infinite pool of friends on the other side that I can call on for this. We're stuck here with what we have and even if we weren't, we can't afford to waste time on a side project while the crisis we're actually meant to be solving grows more and more uncontrollable out there."

Sans, who was staring at Pollard, willing him to be his own voice in this, whines desperately when he sees the man dropping his shoulders in resignation. "No, no, it's alive," he tries with cold fear lodged in his throat. "You ‒ you just said killing children is bad, you can't yell at me for that and then go and kill it yourself!"

Gaster slams his fist down on the table, his last thread of patience finally broken. "When I kill children it's for the sake of monsterkind," he shouts, his outstretched finger angrily pushing Sans back by the shoulder until he hits the wall again. "Not because I'm stuck in whatever kind of rebellious phase you have going on right now!"

"You're not saving monsterkind by killing monsters," Sans keeps arguing against his better judgment, working hard to not shrink in on himself when orange light returns to Gaster's black eyes. "You made this! You can't throw it away now just because it got more difficult!"

Sans has no idea where any of this is coming from. He's not thinking about things like that, usually, but somehow he now feels reminded of the first time Gaster encouraged him to speak, when he just ended up screaming all the bottled up sounds until his throat hurt. It burns in his throat now as well, arguing for the innate worth of a mistreated being that came into this world the same way he did.

Gaster throws his hands up in the air with a high pitched laugh. "Yes, please, teach me about responsibility! Let's completely ignore the fact that you just tried to weasel out of yours by running off and leaving us with nothing to continue the project that you agreed to be a part of. Despite the fact that you're here of your own free will."

"Only I'm not!" Sans is clenching his fists and staring up at Gaster, both of them threateningly leaning towards each other. "Because I just tried to leave and you didn't let me!"

"Oh, do tell! It's almost as if you were trying to quit because it suddenly got more difficult."

"If you have a problem with me doing that, then don't go and do it yourself!"

"Guys." Pollard is suddenly between them, eyes wide and arms stretched out. "Uh ‒ maybe calm down?" He still looks as if he has no idea what's even happening, his eyes wandering back and forth between their faces as if he's never seen them before. "Surely we can talk about this without making it, uh ‒ personal?"

The words make Gaster take a sudden step back, sharply sucking in air through his teeth and straightening his shoulders. He rips his glasses off and slowly draws a hand across his entire face. "Fuck," Sans can hear him mumble into his palm, right before he drops it and puts his glasses back on. "You should cherish the following moment, Dr. Pollard, for I will never say this again," he speaks up again, "but you are of course correct." With a lazy wave of his hand, he motions for Sans to sit on one of the boxes next to the table. "Get over there, please."

Sans isn't quite sure what to do with the sudden change in mood. He is still shaking with angry words that want to break out of him, but he knows if he continues yelling now, there is no way they'll keep paying attention to him. Not after Gaster realized that this whole argument was just an embarrassing display of emotion from both sides that is only getting in the way of their work. Reluctantly, he follows the instruction and sits down on the box, carefully glancing up at the little bundle of blankets on the table. It might be wishful thinking, but he could swear that it just moved a bit.

He looks up to Gaster, who is rifling through the drawer of syringes, and then back to the slight glow of the little soul. "Please don't kill it," Sans pleads quietly, wringing his hands in front of his chest. "I ‒ I bet it can still be useful somehow."

"That is not a matter you should concern yourself with," Gaster answers coldly. "You are a test subject. You do not make these decisions, we do. Deviant behaviour on your part will no longer be tolerated."

Sans doesn't even have time to flinch when he suddenly feels the prick of a needle in his neck. He tries to turn around, but it feels like swimming, like flying, then like falling.

Then like nothing.

* * *

Sans wakes up and cannot move. There is a weight on him, a feeling like soft, thick padding all around his joints and limbs. Everything is numb and slow, not even his eyelids want to move at his command, they just flutter for a bit and stay closed.

He recognizes all this. Waking up from being sedated is not all that new to him, but this time it takes especially long, feels especially exhausting. The first thing that comes back is a dull, pressing pain down his entire back, down the points of his arms and legs that are lying flat on the ground. He must have been lying here for a long time, then.

His fingers are the first thing he manages to move, though it feels like they're packed in soft wool and they don't want to bend any further than an inch. His fingertips slowly drag across the blanket he's apparently lying on, looking for any friction, something to hold on to and give him more of a feeling of where he is, what's going on. He's not surprised when they don't find anything.

It takes minutes of slow, concentrated minuscule movements to get his blood flowing properly again, to step by step regain the feeling in his own body. When he finally manages to blink his eyes open, they immediately tear up at the bright light that greets him, but he pushes through and forces himself to keep them open.

He's not restrained. That in itself is already weird. He's also not lying on the chair that he gets strapped into for experiments and where he usually wakes up when he was sedated. After all, he mostly gets put out like that for the sake of certain tests. But not this time. It's the ceiling of the office that he's staring at right now, the same white as the rest of the lab, but he recognizes it because of the different light fixtures. It gets weirder when he realizes that the blanket he's lying on is his own, the one that he sleeps on every night and that's usually next to Gaster's bed. Why is it in the office?

With a small groan, he slowly rolls over, which is a lot more taxing than it should be, and pushes himself up to his knees. It makes him so dizzy his head just lolls to the side, his neck feeling as if it's made of rubber, and he presses a palm to his temple to keep it upright.

Only after a few seconds of staring blankly does he really realize how different the room looks. He knows for sure it's the office, the size of it is the same, the lights are, the monitors on the walls are all still there ‒ but other than that, everything is gone. The desk, the bookshelves, the chair and the small stock of emergency rations in the corner, even the rug. Apart from Sans' blanket, the room is entirely empty. He can see where the hole in the door was repaired, bolted shut with planks of metal and below that, close to the floor, there is a similar looking, rectangular plank in place, only it looks more as if it was actually put there on purpose, not just to fix a hole.

He grows a bit anxious now, realizing that he must have been out of it for an even longer time than he initially thought ‒ clearing out the entire room and doing whatever they did to the door surely wasn't done in just a few hours.

For a little while, he just stays where he is on his blanket, waiting for the aftereffects of the sedation to subside. Though the clearer his thoughts become, the more he worries, the nagging question of what happened to the other soul taking over his mind and getting louder and louder. If he was asleep for so long, they might have already ‒

He pushes the thought away, shaking out his head and flailing a hand in front of him. There is no point thinking about this, he won't figure out the answer on his own anyway.

Finally, if only to stop himself from thinking too much, he tries to get on his feet. After failing a few times and tumbling back onto the blanket, he manages by leaning on the wall for balance, dragging his feet across the floor on his way over to the door. He doesn't expect much, but still he slumps a bit in defeat when turning the doorknob and pushing against the wood doesn't move the door by one bit.

It's not like he's never been locked in here before, he thinks, as he shuffles back to his little bed on the floor. Only he usually has at least something nearby to keep himself busy, even if it's a collection of books he's read a thousand times already. Luckily he's still a bit spaced out, making it easier for his mind to just drift along without caring about being bored or not. Sitting crosslegged and leaning against the wall, his chin drops down to his chest as he quickly dozes off again.

* * *

The second time he wakes up, his head is clear. It must have been about a day of sleep then, because usually the aftereffects of the sedative need about half a day to wear off and he apparently got injected with a much higher dose than any other time. Also, he must have slept through the entire night, seeing as the lights are shining just as brightly as the last time he woke up and they always get at least dimmed down during the night to imitate a normal day and night cycle. Rubbing his eyes and yawning widely, he gets back to his feet.

In front of the door, right under that new metal rectangle, there is a small tray with a plate of astronaut food and a glass of water. Sans stops in his tracks, confused. It doesn't look like somebody actually entered the room while he was asleep, because why would they put the tray down right there where it's in the way? That metal plank must be hiding a little window in the door that the tray was pushed through.

That seems like an unnecessarily complicated way to give him food. Why didn't they just open the door and give it to him directly?

With a little shrug, he first tries the door again, but it's still bolted shut, so he just picks up the tray and carries it back over to his blanket. There must be some reasoning behind this that he simply doesn't understand yet. Just like there must be a reason for why they took all the furniture. They must be needing it in the lab for some reason, doing dangerous experiments that he can't be a part of.

Something tugs softly at his insides as he thinks of the soul again. If it's even still alive in the first place, why isn't it in here with him if whatever experiment they're doing right now is too dangerous for a child to be nearby? It's one of the rare occasions where Sans begins hoping there actually isn't any scientific reason for him being locked in here, that it's really just a punishment for misbehaving before. Now that he thinks about it, that really is a lot more likely.

Well. Nothing he can do about that. Compared to what he expected (pain, syringes, blood, screams,) this is actually not so bad. He's been locked away before, after all, and even without the extra entertainment he can manage a few days of boredom in here.

He eats slowly, careful not to upset his empty stomach, and leaves more than half of the portion before setting the plate aside. Without much else to do, he curls up on his side, not tired enough to sleep, and just watches one of the flickering monitors on the opposite wall, where green code occasionally blinks across the black screen.

It feels as if he lies there like that for an incredibly long time, but it can't actually be all that long ‒ the lights stay on, even when he feels that, surely, it's been way more than twelve hours by now. He turns from one side to the other, shuffling under the blankets when he gets cold, then kicking them off again when he starts sweating. At some point he gets up and walks around the empty room for a bit, but it feels pointless so he sits back down.

It's so hard to say how much time passes, so he has no idea if he just sat there for a few minutes or actually for more than an hour. Definitely long enough to lose a bit of patience, so he walks back over to the door and starts knocking on it. Just twice, at first, but nothing happens, so next he tries four times, then six after a pause. He leans against the wood, listening, and it's either completely silent on the other side ‒ which it rarely is in the lab when science is happening ‒ or they have done something more to the door, something to keep him from being able to hear them through it.

His next wave of demanding knocks is a very long one, he doesn't even start counting but just keeps knocking with increasing frequency, only occasionally pausing to yell "Gaster" or "Pollard" in a likely futile attempt to get their attention. He's not even entirely sure what he wants from them, but just knowing for sure what's going on would be nice, just a little explanation of what's expected of him in here and maybe how long he has to stay.

He gets nothing.

When his knuckles begin to hurt, especially where there are still scabs left from when he punched the tank, he gives up. With a resigned huff, Sans returns to his blanket once again and just sits for a while, rubbing his hands.

Even though he slept the entire previous day and then did absolutely nothing since waking up, he soon starts feeling tired again. Maybe it's just because he can't do anything else, but he lies down on his back and closes his eyes to slowly drift off to sleep.

* * *

The lights are still on.

Does that mean he slept through the entire night and it's morning again? Or did he just doze off for a few minutes? Not knowing even the approximate time of day is slowly starting to scare Sans. This time, he tells himself as he sits up, this time he'll just stay awake until the lights dim, then he can be sure it's nighttime and that's when he'll go to sleep.

He feels hungry, it might really be the next day then. Though he didn't eat much in the first place, so maybe it doesn't mean anything. The leftovers are stale and tasteless, but that doesn't actually say anything about how long they've been sitting there ‒ it's astronaut food after all. It's always stale and tasteless. After eating everything that's left on the plate, Sans puts the tray back on the floor in front of the covered little window.

Sitting still is impossible today. Normally he can keep himself busy with thoughts, with thinking up equations and solving them in his mind, but today it's all just circling around aimlessly, no number sticks to the place he puts it and he somehow manages to confuse himself with the simplest math. He gets up instead and wanders around the room again, for much longer than last time.

First, he just walks in a circle along the walls, but it's a very small room and he gets dizzy after a while. He changes direction then, but the effect stays with him and he has to stop for a moment. No circles anymore, he decides, and instead begins walking in patterns mostly made out of straight lines. It becomes a zig-zag pattern and it's very effective in keeping him busy. He measures the distances between many different point in the room by walking along the straight line and putting one foot directly in front of the other. His very small feet fit twenty times into the direct diagonal between two corners, which is the longest distance he can find, obviously. It's also a balancing act, so he has a little challenge cut out for himself if he wants to measure the entire room.

He feels that it takes a very, very long time to walk all those patterns at least fifty times each, learning all the numbers by heart and calculating angles between the lines, but when he finally runs out of new paths to walk, the lights are still as glaringly bright as before.

That feels wrong. He spent an eternity, _an eternity_ , walking through the room, so long that his legs hurt and his toes feel funny and his head is bursting with numbers that are completely unimportant. But the light says it hasn't been an eternity, the lights says it might have been a few hours or a few minutes, who even knows?

Sans is tired, his eyes want to fall shut, but he can't go to sleep before the lights go out. His stomach is growling at him, the tray is still empty and no one has reached through the window to replace it.

Did they forget he's in here, maybe? If whatever experiment they're doing is especially interesting, then it's not too farfetched to think they got a bit carried away. He quietly hopes that the "experiment" right now is them doing everything they can to keep the other little soul ‒ the baby ‒ alive. It drags his own soul lower to think about it and he rubs his chest as if it's a physical ailment and not an emotional one.

With a quick shake of his head he stops the pointless gesture and blinks a few times to try and wake up his eyes that just keep on drooping. It's not time to sleep yet. Usually he's not supposed to use magic if not specifically instructed to by Gaster, but he's never really gotten into trouble by just practicing the simple moves a bit without being prompted. And if they really don't remember that he's still in here, then throwing a bone or two at the door will surely get their attention. Even if it ends up making them more angry at him, at least he'll know that they know and maybe he'll get to sneak in a few questions, too.

Sans summons just a very small row of thin, short bones and has them sweep out in front of him in an arch so the door will take the brunt of the hit and the walls on the left and right just a small part. It's not enough to do any actual damage of course, just hopefully rattle the door a bit more forcefully than he could with his hands.

He doesn't expect them to just lightly touch the door and immediately dissipate without even a single sound.

For a moment, he just stands in confusion, shakes out his hand a little as if that had anything to do with anything. Alright, so maybe that attack was a bit too timid. He normally doesn't misjudge the effect of his attacks like this, but he might still have a tiny bit of the sedation in his bloodstream and he could imagine that it maybe influences his magic a little. Maybe.

He shakes his head lightly and the next attack he summons is much more powerful, one that would, under normal circumstances, at least loosen one or two of the wooden planks in the door.

Nothing happens. Just like before, the bones he flings at the walls simply fall to light dust that gently floats away into the air.

Cold sweat breaks out on Sans' forehead and he nervously takes a few steps back and forth, pacing for a short moment. His fingertips are absently tapping his chest, like they used to do back when he didn't know any other way of triggering his magic yet. He can feel it right there, the magic bubbling in his soul and traveling with his blood along his veins. It feels just like it always does. Why isn't it working?

His single attacks don't do a lot of damage, he knows that. It's just one measly attack point, but that's why he has learned to shoot them out quickly and in great quantities. The wave he readies this time consists of twenty individual bones and even though objects of course don't have HP and don't work the same way souls do in battle, it's still an attack that should rip even the thickest wooden door to pieces. He ripped a hole in this very door with just one lazy, five boned attack a few days ago! Even if it's now a reinforced steel door, it shouldn't stand a chance against this kind of attack.

Bone after bone zips through the air and bone after bone barely even knocks against the door before falling apart, doing absolutely nothing.

Sans lets out a frustrated little sound as he begins just randomly throwing out more attacks, making them bigger and smaller and faster and slower, the movements of his left hand growing more and more erratic when one after another just suffers the same fate as its predecessors.

His hands clutch at his shirt covering his soul, crumpling the material between his fingers and breathlessly tugging on it. This isn't right, this is not supposed to happen. He's not that weak! Everything _feels_ alright, so he doesn't understand, his magic should be fine, it shouldn't just suddenly change like this ‒

Unless it's on purpose. Unless they did something to his magic to keep him from breaking down his confines, to keep him from even using it simply to be noticed. His hands cramp up painfully and begin trembling. Can they do that? Can they change somebody's magic like that? They made him, they created his magic in the first place, so it could be possible. His magic doesn't quite work like anybody else's, after all. What if this is part of his punishment, what if they took away the weapon they gave him and that he turned against his own creator?

What if it's permanent?

The thought makes him bolt forward with a breathless scream and run for the door. Of course it still doesn't open, but he loudly pounds his fists against the wood, shaking and screaming for someone to open. He just needs one short second to talk to Gaster, just to ask him about the magic, that's all! He'll be good after that, if he just knows that they didn't _break_ him like that.

The adrenaline wears off quickly and he stops punching and kicking the door, instead falling forward and touching his forehead to the cold wood with a small, mostly suppressed sob. Just think, Sans, just for one second. If they don't want you to make a ruckus with your magic, if they actually went through the trouble of taking it away from you to stop you from doing that, what makes you think that doing the same just without magic will have any positive results? He could slap himself for being so stupid and panicky ‒ that's exactly what lead to the last disaster he caused, he thinks with a shudder. If he could just stay calm and stop himself from freaking out over every little thing, he wouldn't even be in this situation right now.

His soul is not pounding violently in panic anymore, it just shrank away, dropped away as if it's trying to shrink. It shouldn't matter all that much, should it? One attack point, zero attack points, it's hardly even a difference after all. Not like he was doing much with it anyways, not really. If the creators think that taking it away forever to punish him for one instance of very, very bad behaviour, then who is he to judge?

Still, when he slinks away to his bed again, he can't quite drop the protective posture he's adopted, the way he's hunching over, his hands lightly pressed to his chest to cover up his soul, to keep it safe. He wasn't even awake for whatever procedure they did on it this time, he doesn't even know for sure what they did, but nothing, absolutely nothing has ever made him feel quite this violated.

It's his soul and they took something away from it. His attacks, his magic, his way of presenting his soul to the world and make an impact, however small. Though he knows he would likely never leave the lab anyways, never meet other monsters that would challenge him to battles so they can share their most basic forms of self-expression with each other, though he knows this social aspect of souls and magic doesn't matter in this world of science ‒ despite all that, he still feels like something was ripped from his very core and thrown away, leaving his soul smaller, more empty, less like itself.

Sans doesn't cry, but he curls up on his blanket, cradles his broken soul in between his fingertips and mourns.

* * *

Even after everything, the day still isn't over. Sleep tries to creep up on Sans and overwhelm him, so he has to sit up and slap himself to keep his eyes open. There is no sleep until the lights are out.

His blanket is old and worn, so it's not too difficult to unravel the woolen threads around the hemline and brush them out so the individual threads lie neatly next to each other on the floor. It's still a lot of very samey, very delicate work and even though he originally intended to unravel the entire hemline, he stops after only one side because his head feels so heavy he's just going to fall asleep if he tries to keep going. Then, he counts. Three times in a row, just to make sure he gets the correct number, and every sixty threads, he makes a knot into the wool and keeps going. It's enough for three knots and then thirty loose threads.

He kneels down and, starting on one side of his line of threads, he starts counting the seconds in his head, shifting one thread to the side with each second as a visual mark of how far he's gotten, and makes his way along the blanket like this. Counting through all of it once translates to three and a half minutes, so he goes all the way to the end and then back again and when he gets back to the start after seven minutes, he flips one thread over so he can still count it but doesn't have to keep the total number in mind.

It's so mindnumbing after a while that even though he's doing this specifically to keep track of time, he soon forgets what any of the numbers in his head even mean, just counting along automatically and flipping over one thread after another. At first it feels like he'll soon be too tired to keep going, but right in that moment something in his head seems to press his autopilot button and he's in that strange state of mind where he's too tired to go to sleep, too tired to even make the decision to stop what he's doing, and he just keeps going.

His hunger goes away by itself after a while, but his throat quickly gets dry and scratchy. He ignores it, too caught up in his counting and too numb to anything else. When he has flipped over all of the threads once, he ties a second knot into the first one and starts all over again. His mind doesn't catch up to the actual meaning of that.

Sans passes out over the blanket when he's almost through for a second time.

The lights are still on.

* * *

The tray was finally switched out for a new one. The very second Sans wakes up and registers that, he's already lunging for the glass of water ‒ a much larger one than last time ‒ and can just barely stop himself from chugging it all down at once. He drinks half of it, slowly, not knowing when he'll get a new one. The food he eats all at once though and he puts the empty plate back on the floor.

He'll have to find out the intervals here, which is already hard without having a solid understanding of time, but if he can somehow figure out a pattern, then he can at least properly ration the food and water he gets. Right now he suspects that they'll only exchange a completely empty tray for a full one and possibly only when he's asleep or otherwise unaware, seeing as he hasn't actually seen the little window open up once.

Looking at the ordered threads of his blanket makes his head swim as he thinks back to his counting efforts. At least now he has the presence of mind to actually calculate how many hours he effectively documented in the end. Though it does take a moment to really sink in, going through the number of flipped over threads and remembering what the amount of knots means.

Forty-two. He sat there counting threads for forty-two hours. Without food or water or sleep.

Sans pulls his knees up to his chest and drops his head onto them, taking deep breaths. Now he can't help but wonder how many hours he must have spent marching all over the room before, how long he was even asleep, or for how he long he was throwing useless magic and then useless fists at the door. For how long has he been in here?

How long does he have to stay?

Shoulders tense and shaking, he clambers back on his feet and feels himself start wandering along the patterns he made up and measured earlier, his feet just slipping back into the already familiar movement as if they didn't need any input from him. Sans stops them, stomps on the floor even and balls his hands to fists.

His eyes focus on the monitors on the walls, the ones that are such a normal part of life in this lab by now that he hardly ever notices their flickering. There are three, one on each wall except the one with the door. Sans now walks up to the first one. When he stands on his tiptoes, he can just about reach the lowest row of buttons. The code keeps flashing across the screen, usual displays of everyday Core activity and statistics.

It's just a stream of information, hardly anything can even be controlled from these monitors. But Sans is desperately looking for anything to keep himself busy, so bored that even reading through line after line of dry code suddenly seems unnervingly appealing. First he tries pressing through all of the buttons, the ones that usually at least somewhat control what is being displayed, like the room temperature and the time. His fingers shake as he remembers that, but his hesitantly rising hope is immediately crushed to the floor again when none of the buttons do anything.

Manual control must be turned off. Just to be sure, Sans tries the other two monitors as well, but he can press buttons as much as he wants, nothing happens.

That's not too bad, he quietly tells himself, he doesn't need to control what's on the screens, as long as he at least has something to read. He can't see anything from directly underneath the monitor of course, and the writing is tiny so he also can't read it from too far away, especially not with his bad eye. He needs to take a step back from the wall, that way he should at least be able to read the lower lines.

As soon as does that and looks up again, the monitor turns off. Sans gasps quietly and it sounds so, so loud in the pressing silence of the room that it almost doubles his surprise. Confused, he steps forward again, reaching up to check if the flat screen is somehow broken, but the moment he does, it flickers on again.

Sans is like paralyzed at first and his hands grow ice cold. He very slowly drops them back to his sides, keeping his eyes on the screen as he steps backwards. Just before he reaches the point at which he could actually read anything, the monitor switches off.

He stares. Then he walks back and forth a few more times. He does the same with the other monitors, always with the same result. He tries standing with his back to the screen and watching its reflection in the monitor on the opposite wall, only to see that it doesn't turn off this way, so it's not something that's simply triggered by his proximity. Someone must be watching, someone who knows at which point he would be able to read the code and who makes sure to turn the screens off at that exact moment.

Sans laughs.

He drops to the floor in the middle of the room, presses his hands to his temples and laughs, loudly, breaking the dull silence around him with increasingly screechy sounds. He laughs, and then he screams, and then he lets himself fall on his back on the floor, goes completely silent and stares up at the ceiling. It's white and smooth, with a pattern of small, round holes all over it. The camera, or multiple cameras, must be hidden in there somewhere, because there is nothing else that could be hiding them.

It's not that he thought he was completely unsupervised in here, but to think that either Gaster or Pollard is watching his antics so closely that they can turn off the screens at just the right moment, simply to mess with his head? It freezes him in place, cold shudders trickling down his arms and back, the laughing or screaming still bubbling in his throat ‒ he can't tell the two apart anymore. But they're watching, they're judging, taking note of his every action and he can't be weak, he has to swallow it all and just sit out his punishment.

This is not so bad, he says to himself, covering his face and calmly breathing into the hollow of his hands. This could be so much worse. Nobody's hurting you, there are no syringes, no pain, no dangerous science, none of the things you were afraid of happening.

Don't be ungrateful.

And don't think you don't deserve to be punished.

* * *

Sans sleeps.

Sans counts threads.

Sans walks patterns across the room.

Numbers upon numbers pile up in his head, he's thinking in equations, reciting entire books he knows by heart.

He looks at the ceiling and the ceiling looks back.

He steps back and forth in front of the monitors, back and forth, back and forth, he keeps going just to see how long they can do this, it's almost like a game. After he doesn't know how many hours, the screen doesn't turn on again. It feels like both a victory and shaming defeat.

He tries to pry the little window in the door open, but there are no edges, no screws, nothing to hold onto or to push, just flat metal that can only be moved from the outside.

The lights stay on. The seconds pass and feel like hours sometimes, or the hours pass and feel like seconds, day after day after day goes by and he doesn't even get hungry anymore. His hair is growing out with no one here to shave it every other day and for a while he tries to keep track of time like this. But he doesn't actually know how quickly hair grows, so what does it mean that the strands are slowly growing past his ears? He rips them out instead, hair by hair, because they itch on his scarred scalp on the left and he can then knot them together to longer, thicker strands that he arranges into images on the floor. But they always disappear when he falls asleep and wakes up again to look for them.

There are moments when it's suddenly peaceful. When he just lies on the floor, on the blanket, or maybe he sits against the wall, doesn't matter because he can't feel his body anymore anyways. His mind is just empty then, just drifting like a cloud, there are no words or numbers or thoughts left. And if he stays like this long enough, it slowly feels like flying, like seeing his little room drop away underneath him, the walls stretching higher and higher as he floats towards the ceiling and he looks down on the white floor, the brown blanket in the corner as it all just shrinks away.

And then, with a start, it stops being peaceful and becomes scary instead, when his mind panics that it can't make its body move anymore, when it realizes it shouldn't be floating, when the floor that's drifting further and further away is suddenly a safe haven that's becoming unreachable. When the thought of being anywhere but here, in this room, with this light and this blanket, makes him break out in cold sweat and just imagining the door opening has him curling in on himself in horror.

And other times nothing is peaceful, not even fleetingly. It's when the walls are moving, creeping closer every time he blinks and he presses his back into the corner, hands pushing against the walls on either side until his muscles shake and his eyes are burning and tearing up, but he has to keep them open, he can't blink, can't let go of the walls, they'll close in on him and crush him. It's when he dashes for the door suddenly, banging his fists against the wood, yelling, screaming, crying, he doesn't even know what he says half the time. Sometimes it's pleading, sometimes bargaining, then he gets angry and he spits words against the door, against the ceiling with the cameras, just to suck the acidic hatred from his blood and make it stop poisoning him.

Knock knock, he knocks on the door. Who's there, cotton, cotton who?

Cotton a trap, help me out.

Knock knock, who's there, boo who, stop crying!

Practicing knock knock jokes can make him very calm, so he does that often. Sometimes, he just tells the door about some of the thoughts he's had so far, about how many steps it takes to walk all the different patterns, he explains his method of counting threads and nods and giggles when the door answers him. It has some really funny things to say.

"You don't matter," it tells him then, a tiny chuckle echoing through the room.

"You are nothing," it says and he nods in agreement.

"Why are you even alive?" it asks then and he's starting to think maybe it's not actually the door that's talking to him, maybe it's actually no one or everyone or, or ‒

‒ and he sleeps sometimes and he lies awake sometimes and maybe it's for a long time and maybe not. He goes back to counting the threads but he forgot how long a second is or what a minute means and everything just swims around in front of him, there are eyes where the monitors used to be, yellow and bloodshot, bulging out of the wall and following him around the room. Woolen threads are spindly fingers creeping along the blanket, cold and sharp as they dig their nails into his flesh and he wakes up screaming, or laughing, or maybe he wasn't sleeping at all because waking up doesn't make them disappear.

Dreams don't care if he's asleep or not, they hover above him as he thinks he's awake but still can't move. Light brown eyes stare at him from above, glinting red in the glaring light, and a grin drips hot blood on his face, rolling down his cheeks slowly, until there is a round, red lake under his head. "It's weird, right?" Chara whispers, cold breath against his ear and sharp hands around his arms. "People being nice to you?" And their hair turns bright and yellow, a ribbon like blood dangling along the strands touching Sans' face, a bone rips through their skull. "Do you honestly think you deserve it?" Penny says, gently squeezing shut his throat with red tears rolling down her cheeks.

Sans thinks he might have stopped eating at some point. Everything blurs together, he knows nothing, can't keep track of anything, he wakes up one time with an IV in his arm and his hands and feet bound to the floor somehow, he doesn't look, doesn't want to know, because more often than not it's someone's hand holding him down, someone's face smiling at him from above, someone's blood or dust collecting on his body as he can't move or doesn't want to.

Needles, needles, needles in his arms and neck and soul, voices and monitors and creators that talk about, not to him. It's a memory, it's a dream, it's reality, it's all the same. Sometimes he wakes up again without restraints, he feels for new scars on his soul, for a bruise on his arm where the needle hit him and can't find any. Sometimes he notices a new wound there, taped and treated and he was so sure it was actually a dream, but then maybe this is a dream right now, because the next time he remembers to look again it's all gone and healed.

His fingers start scratching at everything, at the blanket, the floor, the walls and the door, his own arms and legs and face and lips. He breaks things sometimes, mostly skin, and the taste of metal in his mouth is a constant now, he doesn't want it to go away. There comes a hiss from the vents, the ones he knows are there somewhere but can't see, something is pumped into the room, he falls asleep and wakes up with tight white gloves taped to his hands. They taste like chemistry and he rips his teeth into them, pulls and bites and gets pieces stuck in his throat until it's raw and swollen, he may have stopped breathing, foamy spit is coating his chin. The door gets angry, screeches open and it sounds like someone he remembers now, yelling, berating, commanding.

When he wakes up again in the middle of the room, lying on his side with a weird taste in his mouth and different gloves on his hands, he feels like the hands holding him then might have been more real than the others before, that the tube shoved down his throat and the voices he heard were more than a dream. He has no idea why he thinks that, because none of it felt any more real than Asgore's giant hand patting his head right now, only to stop and press down on his temples until he can hear his skull caps chafing against each other.

Knock knock, who's there, Debbie, Debbie who?

Debbie or not to be. That is the question.

His hair grows past his chin, then he wakes up and it's all gone. It's a second later and it's all grown out again.

"Useless useless useless," Alphys murmurs, her shadows jumping on the walls, dancing round the the room. There is a pair of pink shoes in the corner. Sans isn't allowed to touch it.

Monitor Three is thirsty, Sans has to splash water on it and its voice smells green when it asks him for his favorite food. Sans laughs, standing in the corner and facing the wall so the room can grow behind him, golden light on his neck like sunshine through a barrier. He has to water the flowers, but when he's done the glass is empty and his blanket is wet. His mouth feels dry, crusty, tastes like metal, maybe he coughs a lot. But he missed some of the flowers, he has to give them the water when a new glass comes. The other monitors are thirsty now, too. Astronaut food feels funny between his toes, he giggles and coughs and it makes little red drops rain from his mouth.

 _Hiss_ , go the the vents.

 _Clank_ , go the cuffs around his wrists and ankles when he wakes up and can't move again.

 _Drip drop_ , goes the IV fluid, his old friend, he sees it more often now, he thinks it feeds him because he feels a little less sick. That's not right. He should feel sick.

But when the cuffs are gone and the next tray arrives, Monitor Three flickers on again the moment he touches the food. It turns off when he drops it or steps on it, but it stays on if he eats it, even while he's close enough to read. He can't actually read a lot anymore, words don't quite work when the letters are bouncing along the white walls in his head, but it's something new to look at. So Sans eats the food while watching the monitor, Sans drinks the water, and maybe he feels a little clearer now, maybe it's not so bad to keep doing that.

Sans reads out loud, lines of code like a story book, there are edges and symbols sometimes that look like dragons, then he starts reading another book that he saw somewhere, he can't remember where.

Knock knock, who's there.

Nobody. Nobody. Nobody.

When he sees _her_ for the first time, he screams so much it hurts, bites the glove on his right hand but it's too thick and strong, his teeth can't break it like the first one. She pulls at his arm, tears off his fingers, she needs them more than he does, he thinks they're somehow hers already, have been for years. Her screams are louder than his, her tears are sadder than his, she is monsterkind and he is nothing, she has a son and he has nothing, she is loved and he is nothing, she should be him and he should be dust.

"He doesn't know yet," she cries as his head hits the wall. "He doesn't understand yet," she wails, Sans thinks he may have laughed but his head hits the wall and drowns it out. She struggles to hold the tiny white bundle in her arms, it wriggles and cries, but she has only the one arm and Sans doesn't need his, she can have it, she can have all of him, he doesn't need it.

His head hits the wall.

"He'll never know," she whispers, white cracks in her voice and hot tears in her eye. The baby cries.

Sans' head hits the wall.

"You did this." The white bundle becomes blue, she holds the soul and it's slipping, it's scarring, it's falling. It's starting to look like his.

And Sans' head hits the wall.

And cracks.

And hurts.

And keeps hitting the wall.

 _Hiss_ , go the vents.

* * *

"Extreme situations require extreme actions to be taken," Gaster says. "Do you honestly think you don't deserve this?"

"The funny thing is," Chara says, "this is how it's supposed to be."

"You are a test subject. We are the creators. You are here of your own free will."

"Eeny, meeny, miny, moe," Alphys whispers in the corner. "No one cares if you let go."

"Sans," Gaster says. "Don't be a little shit. You know why this is necessary, I explained it to you. It's not my fault if you don't listen properly."

"It's not a matter of science," Asgore says, "but also of disciplinary actions for deviant behaviour."

"Deviant behaviour will not be tolerated," Gaster says.

"I bet it's really boring in here on your own," Alphys says.

"Knock knock, who's there," Chara sings. "Adore's between us. Open up."

"He will never know." _She_ holds the baby, her left arm, his right arm, a blue soul. A word she never said. "If you leave now, he will never know."

Gaster pushes up his glasses. Hands float in the air. "Let's put it behind us."

Shadows move, but they always do. Footsteps sound, it might be Sans'. His mind never knows when his body is moving anymore. Air smells different, that must be the vents.

The lights turn off.

The door creaks open.

* * *

Dreams are interesting, Sans thinks. They're the one most interesting thing in his room. Even if they make him scream and cry and shiver in terror, it's better than the times there's just nothing.

Then again, everything is dreams, and reality, and nothing at the same time.

It's funny if you think about it.

Sans sits in the corner, knees pulled up to his chest, chin resting on top, arms hanging by his side. The gloves are gone, his fingers feel naked, way too thin, way too sensitive to everything. Even air is too much to touch right now, he tries to keep them as still as possible.

The door is open, or maybe it isn't, or maybe it is, but it probably only looks like it is. Nothing is real. Chara pokes the side of his head, their hands feel like flowers, they want him to go take a look. Alphys holds his hand, it's too much, too soft and light, she wants him to stay a while, where they know it's safe. It's safe here.

He doesn't know where _she_ went. He's a little glad she's gone.

Talking, talking, voices, words, Sans tries hard not to listen, they never say nice things. Creators, this time, their voices are coming from beyond the door where they are standing in the lab, he can see their silhouettes. This is a good dream, it looks very real, tastes fake though. Sans will just sit here with Alphys for a while longer, until the dream is gone and the door is closed and everything is normal and safe again.

Counting woolen threads, one two three, he doesn't actually need the blanket for that anymore, four five six, he remembers that it used to be seconds way back when, but now it's just threads. They have their own pattern. It's never the same, that's the key.

A knot. Two knots. Two rows, that's seven knots. Flip one over, start again. Five flips. The door is still open, the lights are still out. Sans is amazed that his mind even remembers what darkness is. His eyes hurt. His everything hurts. There is light where the creators are waiting, but he'd have to walk through the door to get there. You can't walk through the door.

The creators leave. When they come back, they're pulling something along with them. Sans watches only because Chara tells him to.

Suddenly, blue.

A little heart. A little soul. He can see it pulsing from here.

Gaster stands in the doorway, holds the blue in his arms, shows it to him. Sans stares.

A knot. Two knots. Grumbled words, a hissing sound, not a vent this time. Two rows are seven knots, flip one over. A small, unhappy sound he's never heard before, but it grabs at his own soul, twists it in his chest and pulls it forward.

Sans stands up. Sans walks to the creator, to the blue in his arms. His hands don't like touching things yet, but he still lifts them up, tries to reach. Gaster pulls back, just a bit, Sans has to step forward again, just a bit. Then they do it again.

Sans walks through the door. He doesn't notice. A bundle is suddenly in his arms, a soft weight that his right arm, _her_ right arm, recognizes at once. There is a little boy in their arms. They hold him together, her arm and his, cradling a little blue soul.

A little round face, sleepy, tiny, a tuft of white hair. Sans touches it with the tip of his nose, breathes in.

The boy's tiny hand finds Sans' lying softly on his stomach.

Sans watches him grab for it, his somehow both strong and weak fingers closing around a single one of his. Just holding it as he sleeps.

Sans smiles and cries.

* * *

 _ **Trigger warning for attempted suicide. Nothing overly graphic, but it's there. To avoid please skip from the line "nobody. nobody. nobody" to the next line break.**_

 _ **Also, almost this entire chapter is about psychological torture, so... yeah. It gets a bit dark.**_


	13. 17

_**Holy fuck do I hate this chapter.**_

 _ **This was supposed to be way longer, I had a thousand things planned, but I have the worst writer's block of my life right now, so you're getting this boring, unfinished mess. I hope the next one will be better, but I might have to take a break from this for a bit (more for WORK and UNIVERSITY reasons than lack of motivation or ideas, I promise.)**_

 _ **Well, I couldn't bear to look at this any longer, so I may have skimped on the editing. If you find mistakes, please throw them at me so I can fix them.**_

* * *

 **17**

Pollard is not very confident about releasing Sans from his confinement. Which doesn't interest Gaster in the slightest, of course, and Pollard supposes that he does have two more years of experience with the boy, so maybe he should trust the man's word and not worry too much. Still, he is one hundred percent ready to cast a shield bullet over the exit in case the kid tries to make a run for it again.

Though it turns out that he really needn't have worried. Sans hardly even reacts to being released, doesn't look around or attempt to interact with either of them at all. His attention is entirely focused on SA-N6; or Six, as they've come to call it for the sake of convenience. Gaster can lead Sans through the room and towards the center of the lab simply by pretending to take the baby away from him. Just lightly tugging at the white bundle makes Sans tighten his grip and stumble after it in the direction that Gaster is pulling.

They get him all the way onto his chair like this and Pollard slowly stops worrying as he doesn't protest in any way while they do their routine check-up on his soul. It's almost as if he doesn't notice them at all, he's just staring straight at Six in his arms with that eerie, wide smile of his and doesn't even flinch when they do some of the more painful procedures on his soul.

"You didn't sedate him, did you?" Pollard asks and of course Gaster gives him that look that makes Pollard raise his hands before he can even start with one of his derogatory lectures. "Just making sure. I didn't expect him to be quite this docile."

"Of course you didn't," he launches into a lecture anyways. "That was only the point of this entire exercise after all, so it's natural for you to completely miss it."

Any kind of defensive answer gets stuck in Pollard's throat with his coughing fit of the day, which Gaster acknowledges with an eyeroll that just serves to make Pollard more angry. More anger means less patience for deep breaths, and so he ends up having to turn away from the project for a bit, leaning his hands on his knees and painfully coughing spittle and small specks of dust onto the floor.

"If you're quite done," Gaster's annoyed voice wafts over to him as he finally manages to somehow catch a bit of his breath, "would you care to join in with the actual work?"

Wheezing and furiously wiping his mouth, Pollard straightens back up and immediately has to grab hold of the wall for support. "I can't help it, you ‒" he croaks, but he can't think of a proper insult, much less actually say it with his throat burning like acid and he ends up just waving his hand around in an indignant gesture, before shaking off the pain and walking back over.

It has gotten a lot worse over the past years, but at least now the progression of his sickness has slowed a bit due to some high risk medications that Gaster cooked up. Pollard is still _a little bit miffed_ that he only did that after Pollard joined up with him down here. Before that, it apparently wasn't deemed necessary to try and prolong his life.

With a huff, Pollard goes back to concentrating on Sans' soul readings, which are surprisingly stable, considering. It would have definitely been much worse if he had kept using his magic to try and break the door down, so it's good they managed to discourage that sort of behavior rather effectively. He would have worn himself out so often and so completely that his soul would have caused a brutal magic overload in an attempt to compensate. It's one of the many problems that arises from such a faulty soul construction. Pollard oftentimes catches himself being both ashamed for that work and also utterly impressed that it's even still functioning at all.

Six should have none of these problems, at least. It will have an avalanche of different ones, spawning less from the way its soul is built and more from the way it was "born." Because apparently, nothing can ever just go right in their line of work.

Though a small part of him can't help but be smug about the fact that Gaster's attempt to replicate his assistants' project and do it right this time also went so completely wrong. If only because it would have been unbearable to share a lab with the man if everything had gone smoothly.

"MEC appears fully operational," Pollard quickly says in an attempt to ignore those kinds of petty thoughts. He is poking at the magic essence container installed in Sans' chest and taking its readings ‒ which is more complicated than it should be, because he has to move Six out of the way and Sans really doesn't want him to do that. Pollard doesn't even try taking the baby from him and simply adjusts Sans' grip on it so he isn't pressing it to his chest quite that tightly, but every time Pollard looks away for just a second, he goes right back to holding it the way he did before.

It doesn't look as if he's doing that on purpose to annoy Pollard, though. He hasn't even made eye contact with either of them yet, too busy staring at the tiny soul and holding it as closely to his own as he possibly can. It must be uncomfortable for the baby, Pollard thinks, just as Six begins wriggling his legs a bit and making whiny, mewling noises as he wakes up.

For a few seconds, Sans looks utterly horrified. Pollard watches curiously as he leans back and holds Six out a little, apparently afraid that he broke something. Gaster is still busy with taking readings, but he, too, watches out of the corner of his eyes and waves Pollard off as he steps forward to take the baby off of Sans. Crossing his arms over his chest, Pollard complies and stands back. It seems they're just watching for now.

Six has so far been an extremely quiet baby, but that's mostly because of his many health issues they had to treat extensively after his "birth." Now that he's slowly stabilizing, he is becoming more and more active and Pollard is already dreading the long nights filled with crying and screaming that are sure to follow. He could barely handle that with his own children.

Luckily, there is no screaming yet. Six blinks and yawns, then looks up at Sans' face hovering closely over him and returns the kid's intense stare with a curious look of his own. His chubby little fingers reach up and grab hold of the white strands of hair hanging down, immediately getting tangled. Even though he pulls on the hair, likely trying to bring it closer to his face to get a proper look, Sans barely reacts and just bends his head down a little more, the slightly panicked smile still frozen on his face.

They will have to cut that hair again soon, it has grown past his chin already on the right side. On the left it's short and patchy, seeing as he, for some bizarre reason, kept ripping it out on that side. Even though Pollard is not officially part of the science department anymore and will never be able to actually work there again, the desire to write a lengthy report about all this has been making his fingers itch for months. He could probably base an entire thesis on the behavioral patterns they observed in Sans.

Compared to how Pollard expected him to react to the confinement, he is doing remarkably well. They got him to eat properly again near the end, so the drastic weight loss he suffered in between is starting to balance out again. After they figured out the best way to keep his hands covered, he also stopped many of the self-harming habits he had developed by that point. The hair pulling is one of the things that persisted, of course, but it isn't as harmful as the scratching that happened before that, so they let it be.

And Pollard still isn't sure how much calculated intent went into it when he started banging his head against the wall. Just from watching, it was incredibly hard to tell whether or not he knew what he was doing there, if he was actually aware of the consequences. Meaning he now needs to be put on suicide watch, on top of everything else. Great.

His head is still bandaged heavily on the side and Pollard is ready to step in if he bends his head low enough for Six to reach the wound. So far though they're stuck in their current position, both of Six' hands buried in Sans' hair and lazily pulling on it, while Sans has him safely balanced on his legs, one hand supporting his head. The other is now starting to stiffly move through the air between both of their faces and it takes Pollard a while to properly interpret the awkward movements, which are a result of the kid's hands not being used to this much mobility anymore. Then he breathes a little chuckle as he understands that Sans is speaking in hands, forming the same few symbols over and over again to ask the baby its name. Six watches with round, completely black eyes, an open mouthed smile on his lips and makes happy little sounds at the unusual attention he's getting.

"We're calling him Six," Pollard makes an attempt at communication, but he isn't exactly expecting much of a result. Rightly so, because Sans either ignores him or simply doesn't hear him, as he just keeps asking again and again "what's your name?" with simplified, one handed symbols. Six tries to untangle his hands from Sans' hair without success, though it only serves to amuse him more and he starts kicking his legs enthusiastically, laughing loudly as his eyes follow the quick, awkward movement of Sans' hand.

Gaster suddenly reaches in from the side, grabs hold of Sans' wrist and uses his other hand to sign the same information Pollard just gave. He has to do it a few times in a row to get Sans' attention, but then when he lets go of his wrist the kid quickly mimics the sign for "six," pressing his thumb and pinkie together and then turning back to Six, repeating the name with a question mark. Gaster quickly pulls him back and tells him with his hands that Six can't talk.

"So, this is it now?" says Pollard, rubbing his forehead in resignation. "We have to talk in hands from now on? I told you this would cause communication issues."

Gaster stands back up with a chuckle as Sans looks down on Six questioningly. "Oh, Pollard," he sighs and Pollard immediately feels his anger spike at the tone. "It's almost adorable when you think you have any right to say 'I told you so.' Because yes, obviously up until now I was under the impression that we would be able to effortlessly resume verbal communication after releasing him, that's just how ignorant I am about matters of psychology." He takes a long moment to stare at him over the rim of his glasses before turning back to the readings. "What would be more of a strain on our research, Dr. Pollard, a subject that is actively trying to fight and escape or one that has a bit of trouble with words? Since when exactly has this subject's input ever been of any importance in the first place? Stop whining about things that aren't even relevant just because you suck at speaking in hands."

Pollard grinds his teeth, but some in the back of his mouth are already loose and this isn't doing them any good, so he quickly stops. "If it's that unimportant, I must wonder why you even taught him to speak in the first place and why, when I came down here, it was obviously a common occurrence for the two of you to have entire conversations."

Gaster slams a flat hand on top of the monitor he's looking at and Sans flinches back, pulls Six closer to himself and buries his face in his small chest. Within seconds, Pollard is there to pull them apart again, untangling the baby's hands and holding them back as it tries to inspect the bandage on Sans' head. "Will you please, for the sake of everyone's remaining sanity, learn the difference between necessary and conducive conditions," Gaster says, apparently not even noticing the effect of his increasingly short temper. "Being able to communicate with the subject ‒ _which we still are_ , by the way ‒ is helpful but not required, while the subject being _fucking present_ in the first place is kind of essential. And yes, how surprising that I fell into the habit of talking to it, seeing as it was the one being in my immediate vicinity whose mental capacity came closest to my own for two years. A phenomenon I'd think you would understand, Dr. Pollard, as I saw you talking to the toaster yesterday."

"I wasn't talking to it," Pollard huffs defensively. "I mean, yes, I might have been yelling at it a little, but ‒ well it's not my fault you bought such a crap toaster! It doesn't work at all."

"A problem which will surely be fixed by yelling at the inanimate object."

"I wasn't ‒ okay, you know what, this is stupid, can we just ‒ Sans, no!" He grabs hold of Sans' wrist just before he can reach into Six' chest cavity and touch his soul. "Don't touch that!"

He would have thought Sans to be more easily intimidated after his experience in isolated confinement, but the opposite seems to be true. Even though he doesn't protest or try to fight against his grip, he also doesn't shrink back from it. The loud noise from Gaster hitting the monitor on the other hand had him flinching in shock. Pollard adds it to the mental list of things they now have to consider in their interactions with the subject, thinking he should probably make a real one at some point.

While Sans immediately stops his movements the second Pollard holds him back, he then reaches out again as he is let go and Pollard has to quickly interfere once more. Touching the soul doesn't necessarily have to cause issues ‒ it all depends on the intent of the one reaching for it ‒ but it's still rather risky, especially with a soul this young and weak. Pollard pushes Sans back by his shoulders, trying to get him to take his eyes off the baby and look at him instead. "No," he repeats, using one hand to clumsily form the word as well. "No touching."

Gaster's hands join in from the side to go into more detail, but Sans doesn't pay all that much attention to it anymore. The first "no" was apparently enough already, as he now leans back and stares at the soul with a slight pout, more put out than actually upset about the reprimand. Six is making insistent grabbing motions in his direction, but Sans now holds him a little away from himself, his hands clasped firmly under the baby's arms and keeping it sitting upright against his tucked up legs. They're still looking at each other, both apparently completely fascinated by this new person, Sans' searching eyes still full of wonderment and something like awe, almost. Six, of course, is just blubbering and grinning, kicking his legs and waving his arms.

"Alright," Gaster interrupts Pollard's musings, clapping his hands and moving away from the monitors. "Still a bit malnourished, but that was to be expected. Head wound seems to be healing nicely without any lingering side effects. Put the thing away and let's test some magic."

'The thing' being Six, of course. Pollard glances between the two children who are still caught in their quiet assessment of each other and nervously looks back at Gaster. "Uh, do you think it's a good idea to interrupt them right now?"

In a moment of silent calculation, Gaster watches the two as well, his arms crossed and one long finger tapping his chin in a pensive rhythm. Then he takes a step closer, dropping his instruments on the desk and bending forward so Sans can see his face as he talks to him. "Sans, we're testing your magic now," he says with both words and hands. "Six needs to go."

Now this does get a reaction. From one moment to the next the relative calm vanishes from Sans' manner, with tense shoulders he curls in on himself and around Six, the baby's face resting against his collarbone. It makes a few disgruntled noises at being jostled around like that, but otherwise keeps still and holds onto Sans' shirt with tiny fists. Gaster snaps his fingers in front of Sans' face and shakes his head. "None of that," he admonishes coldly and moves to take Six away from him.

Sans flinches back, staring past Gaster at seemingly nothing and his mouth falls open to give a shrill, keening sound that has Pollard jumping in surprise and pressing his hands over his ears. There is no anger or protest in the persistent scream, only sadness and grief. His muscles are twitching, something almost like terror making his small frame shake uncontrollably. Six is unhappy now, the loud noises scaring him into quiet whimpers.

Gaster turns back around, snatches a remote control from the desk and presses the button for the air conditioning.

 _Hiss_ , go the vents.

Like a puppet with its strings suddenly cut, Sans slumps down, all tension leaving his muscles and all emotion dropping away from his face. His arms go slack by his sides and Pollard has to jump in and catch Six before he starts slipping to the ground.

A triumphant smile on his face, Gaster motions for Pollard to come closer, making sure that Six is still well within Sans' field of view. That is, if his eyes would manage to focus on anything again. If Pollard didn't know perfectly well that the vents are simply pumping cooler air into the room and nothing else, he would have thought without a doubt that the kid really did get drugged. As it is, simple conditioning to the sound itself has him acting sedated without any need of actual medication.

Gaster pulls a stool over to himself and sits down right next to the chair, strapping Sans' wrists and ankles into the metal cuffs ‒ he has to make them quite a bit tighter than before to compensate for the weight loss. "There we go," he murmurs meanwhile, weirdly falling right back into the habit of talking to the kid. "You're alright." When he's done, he snaps his fingers again and keeps doing it until some of the fog lifts from Sans expression, the white pupils in his black eyes growing brighter again and, after a lot of blinking on his part, focusing on the scrawny hand.

The following hand signs are formed slowly and carefully, making sure that Sans pays close attention and doesn't miss even a single word. "Deviant behavior," it begins, and Sans practically jolts himself fully awake at only those first two words, "will not be tolerated." Sans' hands, bound as they are, still manage to form the rest of the sentence in perfect synchrony with Gaster. His face is empty, completely devoid of any emotion, as he simply looks at Gaster's fingers with quiet expectation, half lidded eyes and a stiff, cold grin tugging on his lips.

Gaster waves Pollard closer, even pulls him by his elbow until he is standing right next to him, then he leans back and makes Pollard hold the baby practically right up to Sans' face. A flash of emotion dances across his eyes, he stares at the clearly visible soul with a sort of achy longing, his fingers twitching cautiously against the armrest.

"Now, if you really don't want to cooperate," Gaster continues with the same slow and careful signs, "we will need to find a different way to finish our experiments. So, Sans, the decision is entirely up to you. Do you want us to run the tests on Six or on you?"

Sans is shaking his head wildly halfway through the question already, then a shrill laugh breaks out of him and into the expectant silence, his feet trying to kick the air despite their restraints. His knuckles grow white as he clenches his hands to fists, the laugh quickly petering out until it's only a small collection of near silent huffs of air. His grin widens to reveal almost the entire upper row of teeth, yellowed from the lack of care and streaked with red along the gums. Eyes shifting to the side, focusing on something neither of them can see, his lips start to move almost unnoticeably, breathing silent words into the air.

Gaster grabs the top of Sans' head and turns it back around towards them, his hand staying by his temple to shield his eyes from whatever he sees there. "Sans, concentrate. You have a decision to make." Sans looks past him, a muscle on his neck twitching with every minute movement as he tries to evade Gaster's stare and now also the sight of the baby.

After a pause that silently stretches along between them, Gaster leans back. "Well, I suppose that's an answer, then." With a few efficient moves he unlocks the cuffs that he put on Sans just a moment ago, lifts the kid out of the chair and simply sets him down on the ground next to it. Sans sways on his feet for a bit, balancing with his arms stretched out to the side. The confusion is evident on his face.

Pollard doesn't waste any time, already catching on to what they are doing, and steps forward to lay Six down on the chair, who is still making a fuss about the sudden tension in the air, but luckily isn't outright crying.

Only the tip of the blanket that Six is wrapped into has to lightly touch the seat for Sans to already dart forward with a hollow cry, stumbling over his own feet and ending up with his arms shakily clamped around Pollard's legs. He pulls and pushes, trying to move him away from the chair, but Pollard simply continues without paying him any mind. Gaster walks around and crouches down in front of Sans, forcing his arms away from Pollard's legs. Once again, Sans doesn't actually fight, doesn't try to struggle out of the grasp; he just clutches onto Gaster's sleeves, staring after Six who is now lying on the seat of the chair, pawing at Pollard's labcoat and going indecisively back and forth between smiling and frowning. The little noises he makes, not quite crying but definitely expressions of discomfort, are almost exactly echoed by Sans, only quieter and more desperate.

"Sans, go do something else now," Gaster signs dismissively. "We have experiments to run and you're in the way."

Pollard opens a drawer and pulls out the longest, thickest needle he finds, one that he could never possibly use on a soul as small as the one before him without practically ripping it in half. Part of him wonders if Sans realizes what they're doing, seeing as he learned enough about how they conduct their experiments to maybe recognize inconsistencies such as this.

But another part remembers watching on monitors how this very same child started watering his sleeping blanket like a garden, talking to cracks in the wall as if they could answer and forgetting how food works. Nothing in his current expression even remotely hints at any knowledge of being played; the only thing happening on his face right now is complete and utter fear. His eyes dart back and forth between the baby's soul and the needle slowly inching closer to it, sweat is collecting at his temples and the long hair on the right begins sticking to his face.

None of this is exactly planned and Pollard doesn't know how far Gaster wants him to take this. He would have expected him to say something by now, to pause the process and present the choice to Sans anew, but he isn't saying anything. In that case, Pollard thinks, as he adjusts the overhead light to a better angle and takes care to position the needle, he will just keep the farce going for as long as is possible without causing any actual damage.

The tip of the needle breaches the soft, translucent flesh surrounding the soul and the invasion is met with two gut-wrenching shrieks ‒ the one right in front of him the instinctive expression of incomprehensible pain, the other behind him a reflection of pure, unadulterated terror. He has to pull the needle right back out when Six starts thrashing, tears and snot already coating his face, which is turning red with the need to scream suddenly being so much more important than breathing.

He expected the crying, of course. What he doesn't expect is the syringe being snatched out of his hand so swiftly, he has no time to react at all. He just barely manages to turn around in time to watch as Sans plunges the needle into his own chest, right into his soul, his eyes completely black in blind fear.

"What the fuck!" Pollard manages, lunges forward and sharply pulls it back out, a gush of liquid blue magic rushing after it. Sans falls forward and Pollard can just about catch him in his arms before he hits the ground. He turns him on his back and, thinking on his feet, reaches right into his chest to press his flat palm over the jarring wound left in his soul by the uncoordinated stabbing. Magic sizzles aggressively under his fingers, leaking from the soul in little bursts and he hectically looks around, bending his neck awkwardly to try and find something to dress the wound with.

Gaster is, of course, two steps ahead already and pulls a package of ME containment bandages from his coat, the kind that is small enough to be applied directly to souls. Somehow, even though they hardly ever need those and they are kept in the lowest drawer on the other end of the lab, he just happened to be carrying those with him. Pollard pushes his frustration at never being told anything down with a growl, snatches one of the bandages and rips it open with his teeth. Six' shrill, animalistic shrieking hasn't simmered down even a bit and it makes his ears throb; the headache follows suit like a blow with a hammer. A piercing ringing starts up in his left ear, a quick fit of dizziness grabs hold of him and makes everything swim in front of his eyes.

"Can you make it shut up!" he yells at Gaster, his own voice making everything even worse, but he has to raise it to even be heard over all the ruckus. Sans' body under his hands is twitching, magic consistently leaking out of his soul and now his nose and ears as well, mixing with the small trickles of red blood that follow behind. While Pollard squints his eyes to counteract the sudden double vision, he has to one-handedly fumble with the bandage, trying to get it into position without letting up pressure on the wound. He has fucking cat ears, he's not good with loud noises!

Gaster holds Six in place with one hand, seeing as the baby is too small to fit into the chair's built-in restraints and is now struggling as it lies on its back and would likely go rolling off the seat without the support. But then Gaster manages to grab a more reasonably sized syringe from the side, already filled with a light sedative, and quickly injects Six. His piercing cries subside after only a few seconds and change to little whimpers as he catches his breath again, then, after not even a minute, he drifts off to sleep.

With a small sigh of relief, Pollard shakes out his head and blinks a few times until he can see clearly again. Applying the bandage is speedily done after that and even though Sans' soul keeps straining in its effort to recover the magic it lost, the effect is immediate: the shaking abates and the blood and magic dripping from Sans' face slows down, already beginning to crust over when it stops flowing. His pupils remain dim and faded for the moment, but they're visible at least and he'll likely be completely conscious again in only a short amount time.

Pollard sits back on his heels, looking up at Gaster and trying hard to rein in the no doubt flabbergasted expression on his face. "What the hell was that?" he asks, helplessly waving his hand around to encompass the entire aftermath of whatever just happened.

Gaster leans down and presses two fingers to Sans' neck before standing up again, apparently satisfied. "Seeing as he's currently having some trouble with conventional ways of communication," he begins explaining, checking up on Six in the same way, "it appears he chose a more hands-on approach to convey his decision."

"And you knew he would do that," Pollard accuses him as he slowly climbs to his feet again ‒ the pressure in his joints increased tenfold from sitting on the floor for just a short moment and the normally dull ache in his stomach is now a sharp stabbing that has him slouching involuntarily. "How could you have possibly known that?"

Gaster hisses quietly through his teeth. "It's not about knowing these kinds of things for sure," he explains with a wave of his hand and a false tone of patience, which at least means he's not in the mood for more fighting. "It's about calculating possibilities and preparing accordingly. Also, the amount of time I was forced to spend with the subject has obviously given me a more detailed understanding of how his mind works."

"You still could have told me what to expect," Pollard complains, while they both stand on either side of Sans, who is slowly blinking himself back to consciousness. "I might not have gotten the biggest needle I could find!"

Gaster just shrugs. "It was a more effective scare tactic in the end. He'll be fine, his soul's had far worse."

As they wait for the kid to wake up, Pollard can already see Gaster getting distracted again, shooting glances over to his private corner of the lab where he is working on the latest human soul. Pollard rolls his eyes, trying hard not to get too annoyed anymore that he has to do almost everything else around here by himself, ever since Gaster deemed Chara's soul far too valuable and interesting to be analyzed by anyone but himself. Instead Pollard busies himself with moving Six back to the crib that they managed to built for him and plugs the most rudimentary observation monitors back in so they can at least have an eye on his basic vital signs. Everything is in order, of course. The only thing the needle did was cause pain and a bit of a shock, it didn't even touch the soul at all.

When he comes back and wants to put Sans up in the chair, Gaster waves him off. "The whole point of this spectacle was that that has to be his own decision." There is no heat behind his words though, as he's already sorting through a bunch of project protocols and likely planning ahead for the next few experiments.

It's rather anticlimactic really, the actual decision. After all this fuss leading up to it, Pollard still expected something more akin to a discussion, some more convincing from their side and some righteous anger from his. But in the end, Sans simply stands back up, rubbing his chest absently as his eyes quickly find the crib in the corner. Without even any obvious signs of relief, he looks back to Gaster's hands. "So?" they ask without preamble.

Sans' grin is growing more and more hollow, but he seems intent on keeping it upright, even while silently climbing back into the chair. He lies completely still as they start their tests.

His eyes don't leave the crib for even a second.

* * *

The lab is more shaky than Sans remembers.

Maybe. He's not sure, of course. Any memories of being anywhere else than The Room had almost completely vanished from his mind. Even though it didn't take long for them to come back, they're muddled now, twisting themselves around new fears that seem more important.

Like walls. Walls are scary. When they're too close it's like The Room again, which sometimes feels safe but mostly doesn't. When they're too far away it's nothing like The Room anymore, which sometimes feels safe. But mostly doesn't. He has to reprimand himself when he gets angry about that, because what is he even expecting of the walls then? How can they do anything right if every possible distance they keep is either too far or too close? It's not their fault that he can't decide what to feel and it makes him itch with the need to apologize.

But walls can't understand him, he remembers, not here. They did in The Room. He had many conversations with them there, almost as many as he had with the door.

(Admittedly, their sense of humor was a bit lacking. He preferred the door.)

So if he already can't be sure how walls are supposed to behave exactly and still can't reliably tell the difference between dreams and memories and reality, how can he actually make any real observations about how things are different than before? He can feel the walls tremble and the ground shake beneath his feat, dust trickling from the ceiling and a groaning noise singing a low song about weariness. Is that supposed to happen? Is it even happening at all?

Sometimes it wakes him up, sometimes it lulls him to sleep. Sometimes it makes other things happen, like Pollard stopping their tests and going away to look at readings, or Pollard and Gaster bickering, or Pollard calling someone on the phone and yelling until he has to cough. But those are pretty normal things, he believes, so it might not even have anything to do with the shaking walls.

Most of the time there is no real reaction, so Sans stops really reacting to it, too. He is shook from his sleep by the lab itself, by blue lights sparking across the windows to the Core, by the drowning noises building and building up upon themselves until they're all he can hear, by Chara poking his nose and pulling his ears. He ignores it, gets up, feeds Six and locks himself into the chair, waiting for the creators to wake up as well and continue their work.

'Six' is not a good name, he's pretty sure of that. It's too reminiscent of the original designation, more so than 'Sans' is, because it's still a number. Trying to come up with a new name is hard though, he's never really done that except for himself and SA-N6 can't be twisted and read out loud quite the same way as SA-N5. For a while, his mind somehow gets stuck on naming the new soul 'Strawbeary,' even though Chara huffs in indignation, crosses their arms and explains, all the while shaking their head disapprovingly, that that only works if it's a bear. It seems for now he has to stick with 'Six' until something better comes along.

If it had a personality, Sans thinks. That would be easier. Because some of the names he knows ‒ mostly scientist's names that he read in books ‒ trigger a sort of image in his mind about what the person belonging to that name would be like. But Six just kind of ‒ is. He doesn't do anything. Doesn't even talk, though that wouldn't help all that much. Something happened in The Room that made it harder for Sans to care about what people are saying. He can hear them fine, he thinks, at least on his good side. His head just doesn't particularly want to pay attention to the sounds and decipher them, so it arrives in his mind as a kind of bubbling background noise. Chara's, Alphys' and sometimes Asgore's voices on the other hand are very clear. They don't come from outside his own head, that makes it much simpler.

Even when he makes sure to listen to Six though, there are no actual words. The sounds he makes are _actual_ bubbling noises, some few clear syllables sprinkled along the waves of sound that fall out of the baby's mouth. Sans tries so hard to understand, he holds Six propped against his knees whenever he has time and pays full attention to what he's saying, searching for a pattern, something to help him decode what he's trying so hard to communicate.

It used to be frustrating, he remembers, to continually fail at a task he was either given by the creators or has set for himself. Now, it's just kind of how things go. The worst thing is that part of him understands, that part of him knows with terrifying certainty that that was the point. That making him complacent and passive was exactly what they wanted. But their plan worked so well that he also can't find any other part of himself that might actually care about that, the one part that might actually get angry.

In a way, this is more peaceful.

Just sitting here, doing whatever he is told, and not caring one way or the other.

It might be harder without Six there, who babbles at him and smiles at him even though he doesn't understand, who pulls his hair with surprising ferocity and sometimes blows spit bubbles in front of his lips, which Sans finds equally disgusting and fascinating. Sans can almost watch him grow, he's either doing it very quickly or time is warping again.

Though yes, Sans knows that there is a clock and a calendar now and yes, sometimes he just likes to sit in front of the former and watch the seconds tick away, finding meaning in the movement of the little contraption again, finding back to thinking in hours, days and weeks instead of threads and knots. Still, it's one of those things that, from one moment to the next, can suddenly become scary, can make him break out in cold sweat as he watches the hands wander in their endless circle. Then he stares and stares, counts a different set of numbers, makes a knot, counts again, and the walls creep closer and fingernails dig into his neck to hold his head in place until he tries to scream past the burning breathlessness in his throat.

It's Six that screams for him then. Because he might not be able to do anything, but he can feel things, that much Sans knows. He can feel when things are tense, when Sans is afraid and holds him tighter because of that, when the creators are in a bad mood. Then he screams, he cries, he kicks and struggles where he lies on his back and his voice becomes a terrible siren's call, luring Sans back into what he thinks might be reality. It's so loud and shrill it bites his ears, especially the bad one. As long as Sans is still _there_ with him when he starts becoming unhappy about something, he can often calm him down somehow by looking at him, signing words at him that he doesn't understand but that still entertain him, judging by the little smile with which he grabs for Sans' fingers and sticks them in his mouth.

But if Sans isn't paying attention, or if he's with the creators doing tests, or if he's afraid at the moment and trying to talk his own mind out of putting him back into The Room, then hardly anything can stop Six. Then he screams until he's blue in the face and if Sans' hands are free he presses them over his ears, closes his eyes and rocks back and forth. Pollard tries to be patient for all of two knots, attempts to figure out what's bothering Six, offers food or the single, colorful toy that he has. It doesn't work, it never works, because when Six is this far gone it's not because he's hungry or bored, it's because he's angry, or tired, or afraid, which means they can only wait until he either loses steam or cries himself to sleep. But it takes a long time and then Pollard gets angry, screams back with "What do you want!" and "I can't help you!" and more often than not elects to put him to sleep with a syringe.

Which in turn scares Sans, because he can never truly know what the syringes are for, if they're going to hurt Six, if it means they're going to experiment on him or even terminate him, so then he himself spirals even further down his own downward slope of panic, makes himself even more useless and Pollard is still angry. Sans is grateful when Pollard slaps him out of it, it means they can both go back to business. Though he doesn't quite understand the look on Pollard's face each time, the way he occasionally just slumps into a chair afterwards next to him, staring at the floor with his elbows on his knees and his hands loosely hanging down between his legs.

Once, Pollard talks to him. Quietly. For a long time. Sans does try to make himself listen, but he's distracted by the pain, by boring the tip of his tongue into the inside of his cheek where he bit himself when Pollard's hand ripped his head to the side. The few sentences he does pick up don't seem very important, it sounds a bit like the things Gaster says all the time to justify some experiment or another.

"Scientific innovation, the real, important kind, never happens without sacrifice."

"The happiness of the individual is never more important than the survival of the many."

"Questions of morals and ethics have no place in what we're trying to accomplish here."

Just to train himself to react to spoken language again, Sans nods and nods, he understands, he agrees. He lets the words fade out as the lab starts shaking, the walls groaning with the effort of holding up the ceiling, and he watches from across the room as Six keeps sleeping peacefully in his crib.

Pollard's words become more quiet, raw and trembling along with the walls. Coughing. Dust on his lips.

"It's just, it's what you're supposed to do, you know? When there's nothing to lose."

"I don't even know why I care, sometimes."

Sans doesn't look, but the words are muffled now, creeping out behind hands covering his face and spilling all over the floor in little hiccups. Covered in dust.

"About saving the Underground. I won't live to see it anyways."

Gaster would say something sharp and cruel if he was here. Alphys wants to hug and comfort. Sans can't find it in him to want that as well.

"I'm trying not to be selfish. Just this once. You understand that, right?"

Sans doesn't think he does. But he didn't really listen, so there's that. Pollard is sad and sick and dying, that much he can grasp, but he still wipes his eyes dry, gets back up and goes back to the science. Back to plunging needles into Sans' struggling soul, which is more painful now than before The Room for some reason. Are they different needles, is his soul different? He doesn't know.

It's all about his magic again. A thousand black cables stick out of the hole in his chest, like thick dark fingers. When he stares at it for too long, it gets difficult to remember whether they're coming from the outside trying to get in, or if they broke forth from inside his chest in the first place, growing longer, stretching out, twisting and feeling around for something. When the pressure on his soul grows until there's scathing liquid running from his nose, he couldn't possibly say anymore if the lab is actually spinning all around him, if he's the one spinning or if it's all in his head like the shaking walls.

Still, the orders are to cast his attacks, to summon his bullets, to drop the plastic ball to the ground or pull it in enough directions at the same time to make it float, so he does all that. Mostly it's blue attacks now, cyan bones, rows and rows of them that he has to move through the air in grand tidal waves. Sans can't be as proud of his attacks anymore as he used to be, not after The Room, not after having bone after bone crash against the door with nothing happening. They're his attacks, his magic, his own personal communication with the world, and he's learned that it's ineffective. Useless.

So he lifts and drops and throws things with blue magic and feels powerless.

He rips and breaks and tears things apart with his bones and feels helpless.

Anything moving is turned to cyan dust and it doesn't change a thing, doesn't give him any of that back which he lost in The Room, screaming at a door that he couldn't move. It doesn't matter that there is a tiny ray of certainty in his mind, telling him the problem _wasn't his soul_ , it was _the door_. It's not enough to fix any of the parts of him that broke because he thought they were already broken. What does it matter what came first, breaking or being told that he's broken, if the end result is the same mess of jagged pieces, too brittle around the edges to fit back together the way they did before.

It's only Pollard that watches him do magic now, that thinks of new experiments and keeps the project going. Gaster ‒ Sans doesn't know where Gaster is, half the time, and very often he simply forgets to wonder about it, too. Noises are everywhere around him and inside him, he mostly just lets them waft over him without wasting too much time trying to decipher them all. So if he hears footsteps and swearing and whispering voices from behind the partition screen, he doesn't ask, he doesn't listen, he just lets it go.

It does mean of course that Pollard is also doing the experiment on his own that suddenly has him perk up in excitement.

"Oh!" he exclaims excitedly and scurries off to the side. Sans tries to watch him, a little more interested today because this is new, but even just turning his head a little makes the nest of black cables in his chest move and pull. Magic has slowly and steadily been collecting in his mouth this whole time, every once in a while he swallows a burning mouthful back down because he's not allowed to spit it out anymore.

"Hold still," Pollard warns him sharply, pulling another machine with only a small, slim screen flat on top of it back into Sans' field of view. The cables are so long and strewn so far across the lab, connected even to the unmovable monitors installed in the walls, that he has to drag the machine with him in a complicated zig-zag path to avoid them all. A small light is blinking excitedly in the corner of every monitor Sans can see, a little cyan circle in the midst of white and blue particles that busily move around on the screens.

He remembers something about that, he thinks. Something about isolating particles, about machines unable to do so, about Gaster getting very frustrated. Pollard's excitement right now is not the happy kind that Sans has sometimes seen from the creators when things go right, it's the nervous, the desperate kind, the one that has the man's emaciated hands trembling with his urgent need to not screw this up.

Sans is in pain, of course. It wouldn't even be worth mentioning under normal circumstances, since it's almost the same as saying he's breathing, but it is getting progressively worse right now and Sans is curious how far it will go.

"Gaster!" Pollard screams over his shoulder, without stopping in his adjustment of the new machine and its many movable parts, unfolding it piece by piece. "Get your ass out here, I'm, I'm actually isolating it!" But there is no reaction from behind the screen. Sans isn't even entirely sure that Gaster is back there right now, he might be in the kitchen ‒ or in The Room. Though it's back to being just an office now that the furniture was moved back in. Sans still doesn't like looking at it.

Pollard is cursing under his breath and Sans watches him position the arms of the machine with clumsy movements. The small screen is pulled up and to the side until it hovers right above Sans' soul, five cables attached to it and a cold, green light rhythmically gleaming along its underside, scanning. With every wave of light, Sans feels something move in his chest, his soul being pulled towards the screen as if by a magnet, before falling back into place and then rising up anew. It squeezes the air out of his lungs, every move a sharp pain like the needle he stuck in there himself not too long ago. Suddenly, he is acutely aware of every single scar on the surface of his soul, every single left over incision, every metal port that was installed in it and is now weighing it down, tearing painfully as they're not quite as willing to move around as his soul is. It starts with little pinpricks, an almost tickling sensation along every little irregularity ‒ and there are many.

It gets hard to stay still when the tickling becomes more, little hurts at first and then bigger ones with each scan, until it tears right at the core of his soul every time it moves. His muscles tense up on their own accord, anticipating the pain and trying to prepare, but it's pointless; he can't flee after all, doesn't even want to try. This feels important.

And painful, but mostly important.

Still, he is distracted enough that he doesn't notice much of what else Pollard is doing, apart from the occasional and increasingly furious holler for Gaster to come and help him.

No one comes to help. The machine stands, its arms positioned above and around Sans like ribs around a heart, the bulk of its mass hovering not ten inches away from his face, a long, tapered metal tube. In its middle, there is an empty space that Pollard now slides a small glass vial into, barely longer than one of his fingers. Then he stands back for a moment, hands clutching at the pitiful remains of his hair that still sometimes try to grow out again, his eyes flitting all over the lab across the monitors and to all the places Gaster could be right now.

He is shaking. "Alright," he mumbles to himself, straightening his shoulders and beginning to type commands into the panel on the side of the ‒ Sans can't help but think of it as drill, the way its sharp end is pointing right at his face. Alphys' voice is quietly whispering in his ear, "run run run" it says and his muscles agree, twitching and cramping as he tries hard to keep still.

"Alright. There's, there's no time. I'm doing this whether you're joining me or not!" Pollard yells in one final attempt to get Gaster even remotely interested in what is happening, but even while shouting he's already starting the procedure, decisively hitting the button that makes the machine hum and vibrate as it activates. He runs around the chair and disappears behind Sans and suddenly, before Sans can even properly get nervous about the machine very slowly moving towards him, a kind of metal cage is being clamped across his forehead, steel bolts with rounded tips pressing on his temples. He couldn't move his head now even if he wanted to.

"Don't lie, you want to," Chara whispers, their fingers closed around the tip of the drill as if trying to hold it back. It keeps creeping forward, slowly, humming along the way. Sans stares, breath catching in his throat and fingers curling around the armrests.

It stops right as it's so close to his left eye that he can't look at it in its entirety anymore. It seems just a see-through shadow before his eyes, but he knows it's still there when his eyelashes brush against it with every blink.

Pollard's gloved fingers are suddenly on his face, pulling his eyelid up and keeping it there. "Don't close your eyes." His instruction is shaky, but urgent. "This should be over quickly." He fastens a tiny, plastic clamp around his eyelid and Sans can't help it, he twitches at the strange feeling, his head trying to move away all on its own. He bites his lip to keep in the sharp breath that wants to fall from it, but right at this moment there is a particularly painful tug at his soul and he just ends up biting down too hard. Blood begins trickling down his chin immediately. Pollard finishes up whatever he is doing to Sans' eye and now Sans can't blink at all anymore. Fear begins squeezing at his throat, because that's his good eye, if he loses that ‒

"Alright, alright, hold still," Pollard keeps repeating as he stumbles back around to the front of the chair and types new commands into the little console. "You need to look straight ahead now, this is really important."

Sans doesn't actually think he could do anything else right now, his eye is automatically drawn to the machine, staring at the pointed tip as best it can, even though everything is a blurry mess. When it starts moving again, every single muscle in his neck cramps up in its pointless attempt to move his head away, to flee, to run. Chara's hand pulls harder at the machine, but one is real and the other isn't and nothing happens.

It's a needle, he thinks, as he can just about make out how a long, silvery thing extends from the tip of the drill-like contraption. It's the last coherent thought he can form in his jumbled mind.

The pain in his chest is nothing compared to the burning feeling of a thick, sharp needle piercing his pupil. Magic bubbles up his throat, fills his nose, bursts out his tearducts.

Chara pulls at the machine.

Alphys screams.

The walls bend and tremble around them, Sans can feel them coming closer, compressing the air he's trying and failing to breathe. He hears a crack, a whisper. The magic in his eye is swirling, a maelstrom of scalding energy and he knows he can't possibly be able to see anything right now ‒ _there is a needle in his eye!_ ‒ but somehow, he still sees shadows, silhouettes, flickering in and out of reality, or maybe just in and out of his head. Red light shimmers in one corner of the lab, the rest goes dark, then gray, then white, then dark again.

The sharp smell of chemistry penetrates the air, the familiar feeling of pure magic is burning in his eyesocket, in his skull, his throat, everywhere at once. There has never been so much of it wanting to get out, it's as if he can feel bolts of electricity jumping across his brain and tugging at the strings that will make him see things without actually being able to see.

Black and white blinks in the air above him, loud, screeching static fills his ears, lines of red code drop down from the ceiling. Gray, round, empty eyes stare back at him, then a flicker and they're gone.

A grin revealing sharp teeth grows in the air, code and numbers getting stuck in the gaps between, spilling to the floor in black, viscous drops as the mouth opens and shrieks, any words drowning in the hiss of static.

Hands, full of holes, sign pittering, pattering words into the code. _You don't exist. Everything, everything functions ‒_

 _perfectly without you._ A cry, a laugh, a wistful sigh.

Gray gray gray, then black, then eyes, then water falling from the sky. A cloud drifts in front of stars and blue flowers sing a song nobody remembers. _The thought, the thought, the thought ‒_

 _terrifies me._

And a long, black crack rips Sans' face apart above the eye.

PHOTON

And below the other.

READINGS

And darkness drips from the cracks. Whispers, murmurs, golden light glinting off a dusty knife.

NEGATIVE

Where did the pain go?

The light?

"... will you please, please promise me something?"

There were stars not too long ago. They're dust now.

 _Please forget about me._

* * *

THIS NEXT EXPERIMENT

SEEMS VERY

VERY

INTERESTING

* * *

WHAT DO YOU TWO THINK?


	14. Multiverse Hypothesis

**_There is a specific trigger warning for this chapter, please scroll all the way down to the end for more information._**

* * *

 **Multiverse Hypothesis**

"What the fuck just happened?"

Pollard is cursing to himself, clutching his head with one hand, the other clamped around the thin metal arm of the machine in his struggle to stay on his feet. The tremors that had the whole lab creaking and seemingly tilting to the side only minutes ago now slowly subside again. Flashes of red still break through the walls ‒ through reality! ‒ at the corners, but everything is already carefully knitting itself back together as if nothing happened at all.

Breathing harshly, Pollard stares at the billowing clouds of black nothingness that are retreating back to wherever they came from. A low, deep thumping echoes through the lab, like the banging of an enormous drum in the distance. He would have thought it part of his headache, if he couldn't actually feel the sound vibrating through his entire body.

When finally everything swims back into normality, the dizzy spell and headache immediately leave as well and Pollard lets go of the machine. Only now does he worry about accidentally pushing it into a wrong position, but luckily that didn't happen. Otherwise, the subject surely would have called attention to it somehow. Speaking of which ‒

Both of Sans' eyes are entirely black now, as they tend to be when he's in shock. The needle is still piercing the left pupil, but unlike before, when he was clearly panicking, he now lies very still, breathing evenly. Pollard quickly types the command to retract the needle again. There is no reaction from Sans as the machine slowly moves back, the needle sliding out of his eye inch by inch. Only one little blue drop of magic clings to its tip as its finally outside. Deep blue magic, unlike the kind that's now filling the previously empty vial.

Pollard carefully removes the little glass vial from the clutches of the extraction machine, holds it up to the light and in front of his eyes. It's halfway filled with a clean, clear, cyan liquid with little white bubbles rising in thin streams to its surface. "It worked," he mumbles in relief, talking to himself just for the sake of saying something after this whole display.

"Did it now," comes Gaster's voice from behind him and Pollard is proud to say that it definitely doesn't make him jump at all. He doesn't waste much time on being surprised, goes straight to indignant anger instead and turns around to face his former boss.

He hasn't seen him in ‒ who knows how long. However long he's been shutting himself off to work on his own, apparently much more important project. So even though he wants to jump right into berating the man for showing up _now_ , when everything is over and dealt with, he gets distracted by the fact that somehow, the already deathly white of his skin has managed to become even paler since the last time he saw him, appearing downright transparent now. His usually ever-present glasses are nowhere to be seen and his eyes are sunken in, surrounded by deep shadows and a widespread network of thin wrinkles.

The right eye, his lazy eye, is almost completely closed now, the lid hanging even deeper over it than normally ‒ and also split in the middle. A deep, dark scar that nearly cuts the whole lid in two stretches up over the eye, across the brow ridge and only fading out a few inches above that.

Pollard can't help it, he stares, shaking his head in confusion. Sure, they haven't seen each other in a few weeks, but that's certainly not long enough for Gaster to secretly acquire an injury that jarring and have it already healed up to a scar by this point. Pollard's anger is still there, but the general perplexity about the entire situation takes over and he just asks "What's going on?" a tad more harshly than he usually would have.

Gaster's only functioning eye is fixed on the vial in his hand, or, well, as much as it's able to without the glasses. It looks really cloudy and unfocused. "Did you have to do that right now?" he asks, sounding more like he's admonishing a dog for begging for food at the dinner table than anything else. Pollard can't react in time to keep him from prying the vial out of his hand and holding it up to his face, so close he's almost touching it with his nose.

"Yes, actually," he says hoarsely as he finds a tiny part of his bearings again. "I did. As you would know if you had bothered to show up when I was yelling for you!"

"Ugh," Gaster makes, his hand fluttering around aimlessly as if it's not quite sure what kind of gesture it wants to make right now. "Can we stop bringing that up, please?"

"That ‒ what? I, I don't know how to answer that, honestly," Pollard stutters, what little bearings he had immediately lost again. "This is the first time I'm bringing it up, seeing as it happened, like, ten minutes ago." He half-heartedly makes a move for the vial, but Gaster turns away before Pollard even lifted his hand. "You know what, I'm also not okay with you coming in to reap the benefits of my experiment when you couldn't lift a finger to help me! So, you can just give me that and go right back to your ‒ machine. Thing. Whatever."

"Eloquent," Gaster snorts.

Something is off about him. Pollard can't get over the scar and how suddenly it appeared, or the completely nonchalant tone of voice. Even if he's tired, he's usually a little more invested in talking down to Pollard. Right now, it just sounds as if he's reading a script somebody else wrote for him.

"I feel like I'm going to regret this," Pollard starts, before raising his voice and straightening up a bit, "but, are you sure you're alright? I could ‒ give you a quick check-up if you want?" He winces the very moment he asks the question, mentally preparing himself for the ridicule and verbal assault that is sure to follow.

Gaster lets the vial roll along his knuckles and catches it in his hand again, something that makes Pollard's stomach flip just by watching. He's not even sure what the man's eye is focused on now, it doesn't really seem as if he's looking at anything. How a completely black eye manages to look dull and unfocused is a mystery to Pollard, but somehow it does it.

Then, with a onesided shrug, Gaster spins a little on his heels, drops the vial back into Pollard's hands and smiles past him. "Alright."

Pollard blinks. Opens his mouth, can't think of anything to say and closes it again. "Okay. Good," he manages with his second attempt, trying hard not to look a gift horse in the mouth. The vial in his hand is cold and he can feel the magic fizzling inside it. "But, uh, after we deal with this, I suppose." It's difficult to get back on track with Gaster acting so weird, but he still swiftly finds his indignation again as he gestures lightly with the hard-earned result of his latest experiment. "I isolated and extracted the cyan magic, by the way. You're welcome!"

Even with a challenge such as this, Gaster still doesn't quite find back to his usual fervor in dealing with uppity assistants. Actually, he seems more confused than annoyed. "We didn't already do that?" he asks, very dryly, yes, but it doesn't sound as if it's meant to be sarcastic.

Pollard stares at him. "No," he decides to humor this incredibly strange mood. "No, you couldn't figure it out, that's the sole reason you brought me here."

Gaster nods. "Ah. Yes, that narrows it down a little."

"Narrows ‒ what?" Shaking his head, Pollard throws his hands up over his head and gives up. "Forget it! This is ‒ I don't even know, I bet you just didn't treat that head wound right that you apparently got _whenever_! Just sit down and don't touch anything, I'll look at it right after doing the follow-up."

And wonders never cease, but Gaster actually, truly listens to him, retreats back to the chair that Pollard pointed at and then just sits there calmly, watching him while he dismantles the machine again.

* * *

Sans' eye is empty, no needle, no magic. It feels cold and dry, he keeps it open to stare ahead at nothing. Of course, of course none if the things he thought he saw are there anymore, of course they're not. No red lines of code are bleeding from the walls, no dark nothingness bubbles from the corners to close in on him.

The little sea of voices stays in his ear. Words become harder to make out, it's just a low buzzing now that resembles speech. As if whoever's talking is standing really far away and doesn't deem it necessary to speak up so he can hear them.

Some red light is still there, it's right in the corner behind the partition screen. He feels it more than he sees it, a warm, sharp tickling on his skin. A bit of it shimmers on the left side as well, moving around a little. There it's just like a glimmering residue, clinging to something that spent too much time too close to the real thing.

Something rattles all around him, machine parts being moved from one place to another, the bolts and restraints on him are being loosened, light shining into his eyes until he weakly bats the hand holding the flashlight away. Then a wall shakes. Then Six makes some noise. Then the voices get louder for a second, only to fade right back out of existence. Almost, that is. There are still some whispers.

He's focused on the wall for some reason, on the point where the code was curling, dripping, moving about in lines and spirals. If he doesn't blink, he almost feels like it's flashing there in front of his eyes again, though it looks more like the bursting little dots and stars that appear behind his eyelids if he rubs them too strongly. So, not real?

There's talking and moving, Six gets a bit louder for a second and is soon drowned out again by the whispers, but then he fades back in and Sans wishes he would just shut up for a moment. He's trying to listen.

It's weird how little he sees when he's concentrating so hard on listening. One second, he's still turning his head to the side, trying to tilt his good ear in the direction of the voices without actually being sure which direction that is, the next second his feet hit the ground, his hands automatically hold onto the corner of the crib and his eyes register Six, lying inside and stretching out his pudgy little arms towards him. Pollard must have moved Sans here and he didn't even notice. The impatient grabby motions of Six' stumpy fingers and his fretful mewling suggests that he's not amused by the lack of attention.

Sans turns away from him and absently walks over to the left. He doesn't feel like he would be welcome on the other side, where most of the red feeling comes from, so he'll have to make due with the other, smaller ball of light. Curiosity feels strangely foreign after such a long time of not feeling any, but he does remember the sensation and reluctantly embraces it now.

The whispers are still not loud or clear or real enough for him to make out words, but they sound endorsing of this course of action. Except for one, which seems more confused. This one's definitely behind him and getting closer now, maybe something is tugging at his arm or maybe the laboratory is shaking again, pushing him off his feet. One way or another, he ends up sitting on the floor with his legs stretched out in front of him.

"Oh, come on." Okay, that voice is definitely a lot more _here_ than the others. He knows that one, too. He doesn't care enough to try and remember who it is right now. "Sans, please go to your bed or the kitchen, you're in the way here."

"Let him," another one says, and yes, this one, this is one of the whispers, only it's both a whisper and a real voice, both here and there, existing in two or more places at once and this is suddenly even more confusing than things were before they stuck a needle in his eye and beat his magic until fluffy.

Well, it's still Gaster though, he doesn't even have to think about that. The real Gaster ‒ or what he assumes for now is the real one, no way to be sure ‒ sounds different from the one that's whispering along with the others though. Stronger in some regards, because he's more here than there, isn't floating around in the in-between, but weaker too, less decisive, less knowing. Sans stares at the crack above his eye for a moment, the one that he thought he felt on his own face ‒ but searching for it now with his fingertips, he only finds smooth and unscarred skin.

They smile at each other, teeth bared. Something changed. Is it only Sans that heard the voices bleeding through the code, only him who can still make out their whispers if he strains his ear? Or did Gaster and Pollard hear it too, see it too? Pollard acts appropriately confused, but then again, he always kind of does.

Gaster is smiling. Looking past Sans' shoulder, then back at him. Leans forward in his chair, slowly, his shoulders hunching over and his elbows resting on his knees. Sans gets back on his feet and steps a little closer, now that he's allowed to, standing on his tiptoes to stare right back at Gaster. The right eye, the lazy one, is barely visible anymore under the droopy, scarred eyelid, but the small sliver of it that Sans can see is now shining in a bright, warm red. Only a hint of the usual orange remains near the corners, while the other eye is black and empty as always.

The creator lifts two fingers and uses them to lightly pull down the lower lid of that empty, black eye, until a red rim appears right where it usually does in Sans' eyes as well, but he has blood and the creator doesn't. This shouldn't be there. The rest of the eye shouldn't be this dark either, somehow blacker than black, deeper, nothing ‒ like the nothing bubbling in the corners of the room again.

Gaster's grin is wide and stiff and just like Sans'. His other hand comes up to sign the words that are also sluggishly pushing past his teeth. "Photon. Readings."

Sans keeps staring into the black hole framed red, sitting right in the creator's face where his eye used to be. His own finger lifts as if by itself to finish the thought. _Negative_.

And they find complete understanding in a moment of absolute mutual confusion.

"What did you say?" Pollard whispers. Does he actually or is it part of the whispers pouring out of the darkness, the code, Sans' head... whatever it is at this point.

Whether the whisper was actually there or Gaster just randomly decides to sit up with a sharp intake of breath is beyond Sans' ability to deduce. Either way, the moment is gone, Gaster is back here and trying to pull himself out of there. Pollard apparently got pretty close to the two of them at some point and his hand is hovering in front of him, clutching a stethoscope.

"Please don't wave that in my face," Gaster says, pushing his hand away and then quickly adjusting his collar a bit in an obvious attempt to regain his professionalism.

"You said I could examine you." Pollard's patience is unraveling extremely quickly today, a muscle on his cheek is actually twitching and a thin sheen of sweat is glistening on his brow already. "Seriously, I ‒ I don't know what just happened here, none of that made any sense and ‒ and you don't make any sense! Did you get hit by any aftereffects of the extraction just now?" He looks genuinely rattled by the thought. "If you got hit with some strange magic, you should really tell me about that!"

Gaster looks around the lab as if searching for something, a small smile still on his face. "I can always count on you, Dr. Pollard, to ask exactly the wrong questions. It's not a matter of 'if,' it is a matter of how much, what kind ‒ and, most importantly, when." It appears that his hands are twitching a little, the undersides of his wrists turning towards each other jerkily, only to be turned back around just a moment later. Chara points it out to Sans, their arms folded on his shoulders and leaning on them from behind. Look, that's weird, look how nervous he is. Look, something is happening.

Look, Sans thinks, if Chara is the one who noticed it, then it's not real.

Alphys tries to calm down Six, who is getting a little louder in the background and kicking his blanket with more and more fervor. The syllables falling out of his mouth sound sad, confused and they punch at something inside of Sans. Alphys' glare is a sharp challenge to just get over there and help out, because she can't actually do anything.

None of them can. They can't pull away machines or make anyone listen or even just make sure that Six is happy.

For the moment then, Sans prefers to look at hands that are twitching and that shouldn't be. His eyes follow the creator's fingers, carefully cataloging how the thumbs are again and again drawn towards the palm of the other hand, rubbing circles into the white flesh.

There is still talking, Pollard is still confused and Gaster, in a very unusual turn from standard protocol, seems to be as well. Sans zoned out a bit staring at the hands, hands that he somehow feels are too intact, and now makes sure to carefully zone back in.

"You know what might help?" Pollard is verging on hysterical, the way he paces up and down with short, jerky movements, his hand clutching a piece of paper he apparently started writing a report on. "You telling me what kind of messed up experiments you were running back there! That's obviously where things went wrong, isn't it, because those ‒ complications, if you can call it that, those were definitely not a side-effect of the extraction process. That was your unsolicited 'personal project' pumping magic into the air and messing up the thing that we came here to do in the first place!"

"It appears to me you managed it." Gaster, on the other hand, stands still and stiff in the middle of the room, hands clutching each other in front of him and twitching. His voice is calm to an extend where it's almost serene. "Cyan magic, is it? Isolated and extracted, as you said. Now you only need to figure out a way to safely inject it into another organism and we might just be one step closer to solving this little conundrum."

"I know!" Pollard stops and throws up his arms, the paper goes flying into the air. Sans watches it leisurely tumbling back down. "We both know all that, why are you telling me this! Have you been using any protective gear back there? Because you sound like someone who got his brain scrambled by uncontrolled ambient ME!"

"I believe I did. Use protective gear, that is. And get my brain scrambled, obviously, but that's a given by now, isn't it?" Pollard sputters around for a bit, but Gaster shakes his head and regards him with a tired expression of resigned contempt. "There is really no need for silly overreactions. The red soul is ‒ strong. A lot more potent than the others we've worked with. Probably because unlike the others, it is still complete, or maybe that's just part of its nature. Either way, protective gear can't actually hold off its effects for very long. It hasn't impacted my work too much, so worrying about it is unnecessary."

"Unnecessary!" Still sputtering more than talking, Pollard now takes a couple of steps back from the red glowing corner of the lab. "You mean to say that we've had an unchecked, unconfined source of volatile magic sitting in the lab with us all this time?! And you didn't think it'd be necessary to maybe inform me of that! Also, _it hasn't impacted your work too much?_ Are you kidding me right now! Your face is ripping in half and you have red magic in your eyes!"

Oh, so that's really there? Sans looks back and forth between the creators, a bit more interested now that he's actually getting some useful information out of the dialog.

"Since when is my work about my face? Please do not start hyper-focusing on the one thing you want to talk about and overlooking the actual core of my arguments. Again. This" and he harshly scratches along the black scar with his fingernail in a way that makes Sans flinch just from looking, "is of no importance. A minor annoyance, if anything. The work itself is going ‒ hm. It is hard to say, actually. It's definitely going."

The whispering voices are rising up like a wave, a wave of numerous mixed emotions that Sans can only poorly filter out. He gets anger and fear, sadness and triumph, eager excitement and a splash of curiosity. It must be a lot of different people whispering to him there.

It seems that the entire conversation is completely slipping out of Pollard's grasp. He sways back and forth on his feet, his eyes hurrying from one corner of the room to the next and trying hard not to focus on the red one for too long. The thoughts must be racing in his mind, trying to somehow regain control over all this, but his trembling hands and sweaty face belie the fact that he himself likely doubts that he can. "You," he starts again, facing Gaster and keeping his voice as level as he can, "you need to stop that. Those, those experiments back there. If it's that dangerous, then we can't possibly keep it here ‒ out in the open, in our lab... _inside the Core_! It's, it's completely irresponsible, you're going to blow us all up! Get rid of it, I don't care how, just get that fucking soul out of here so we can get back on track."

Gaster is looking at the ceiling and when Sans follows his line of sight, he too notices the red crack that appeared in the smooth white material, just next to one of the cameras installed there. "What is especially interesting," Gaster says quietly, monotonously, still absently plucking at his new scar with his fingernail, "is the fact that every single human soul so far has been so very different from the others. A different nature, different strengths... unique inherent powers. I wonder ‒"

"Oh my God!" Pollard screeches with his hands clasped above his head. If he still had any hair, he would probably be pulling it now. "Did you even hear a single word I said!"

"Naturally. I'm simply deciding to ignore you. You should really be used to that by now."

With a loud, frustrated grunt, Pollard steps in front of Gaster, just sparing a fleeting look towards the ceiling. He doesn't seem to notice the crack, though, and just pushes Gaster's hand away from his face. "How long have you had that?" he asks, his tone strict and business-like. "The more recent of a development this physical response to the Soul ME is, the better a chance we have to reverse its effects. If this is a result of today's experiment, we can still fix this and get you back to normal."

"You could." Gaster's agreement is entirely uninterested and the way he has to look at Pollard instead of the crack now seems to be a bit of an inconvenience to him. "But really, that would render all my research on the red soul obsolete, so you're not going to do it. What, do you think I didn't notice when this started happening?" He lifts his arms a bit to the side and Sans is not entirely sure what 'this' is. Is it the scar on his face that seems to upset Pollard so? Or the red in his eyes that Sans thinks might enable him to see that crack in the ceiling when Pollard can't? Or just the slight, red glow that, through Sans' eyes, clings to his every limb like the aura of death, pain and sickness clings to Pollard? "You think I only kept letting it happen due to unawareness and stupidity?"

Pollard takes just a very small step back, but squares his shoulders at the same time. The look on his face is guarded now, his words low and careful. "I think," he begins, "that your judgment has been extremely compromised." His voice lowers even more, he leans forward, hand stretching out as if to touch Gaster's shoulder, but stopping right in front of it. "Gaster. Surely you must realize that this is not like you. You spend all your time getting distracted by that soul and whatever kinds of experiments you're doing back there that leave you ‒ mutilated like this! What about saving monsterkind? Has that not been your ultimate priority for decades now?"

"Who said it is no longer?" To someone unused to reading the man's moods, Gaster would appear just as nonchalant as just a few seconds ago, but Sans knows better. His smile is turning into the dangerous one. "It would have had to be someone who doesn't understand the concept of changing one's tactics after a previous tactic bore no noteworthy results ever since its implementation."

Sans slowly inches backwards, away from the creators and back towards Six' crib. He feels the walls creeping closer behind him but he knows that if he turns around, they'll hurry back to their usual place within seconds and that just makes everything so much worse. So he keeps his eyes forward, his good ear tilted in the direction of the conversation that he is, for once, concentrating on, hard. He can feel the danger sneaking closer, even Six can feel it if his increasingly frantic whining is any indication.

A small, disbelieving noise escapes Pollard. "So you're just abandoning our research now?" He turns and points to the drawer that he stored the vial of cyan magic in. "Just when we finally have a real breakthrough! Actual human magic essence in its pure form, you know exactly what that could mean!"

"It will not work," Gaster dismisses him with a shaky gesture, though his face is unmovable steel. "I have seen you do this a thousand times. The most impressive result you manage to get is an interesting new form of battle magic, but not in any way a solution for the ME crisis. The worst results, the ones I have seen you achieve much more frequently, are usually tied to one or two explosions and the loss of multiple limbs. Not necessarily always yours."

"Alright." Pollard's breathing is forcefully calm and Sans doesn't know if it's for his own sake or for Gaster's. "Alright. See, you must realize how crazy you sound. I mean, I'm not even sure why you're suddenly talking multiverse theory? At least, that's what I assume you're doing with the whole 'seeing multiple possible outcomes to the same situation'- thing."

"Well well, you're actually making me regret throwing out the gold stars. Then again, you can't exactly fault me for assuming I'd never need them again." Sans has reached the crib, his hands carefully closing around the edge of it and it almost instantly calms Six down a little. "However, even if you at least managed to get on the right track, you're of course still going in the completely wrong direction. I'm not talking multiverse _theory_. Sadly, I already know that explaining this to you is futile, seeing as all the times I've tried before have led to the exact same outcome. So, we will do it like this: You keep heading towards that dead-end with your cyan magic and I keep building the actual solution to all this. That way, I get to do scientifically valuable research that will save all of monsterkind, and you get to spend your time playing babysitter and occasionally making a child scream." His smile turns wider and Sans grabs Six' tiny hand. "Which is right up your alley, after all."

Pollard's forcibly calm demeanor drops instantly and he shakes his head in enraged disbelief. "You're out of your mind!" His ears are flicking back and forth and Sans wonders why he doesn't shut up. Even Six has. Even the whispers have. "No. I'm not accepting this, not until you give me an actual, valid reason for abandoning this project and pursuing one as dangerous and unpredictable as yours. I don't understand where this is coming from! Everything, everything you've done these past years was about that." And he gestures widely towards Sans and Six, the former flinching violently because he really thought they'd gone unnoticed. "You sent me to my early grave for this, for fuck's sake, _and I went_! You were willing to _kill an infant_ not too long ago so it wouldn't distract us from the actual research!"

And Gaster is chuckling and Sans wants to press his hands on his ear, but Six is holding one and he knows he has to listen. "Oh, please," Gaster drawls, "stop it with the false moral high ground. Between the two of us, I'm not the one who actually enjoys abusing and killing children."

Pollard stands with his mouth hanging open for a second. "I'm sorry?" he then croaks. "Of all the ‒ I ‒ you of all people!" With a breathless laugh he shakes his head, his shoulders are trembling. "With all the things you come up with, that you decide are necessary ‒ and you have the gall ‒! The, the _nerve_ ‒!"

"And again, you are not listening to the words that are actually coming out of my mouth." With his shoulders straight and his hands folded behind his back, Gaster now stands as if nothing happening right now concerns him even the slightest bit. From his position by the crib, Sans can still see his thumbs drawing agitated circles into the flesh of his hands. "I would never attempt to absolve myself from the morally questionable decisions I make. I make those with intent and in full understanding of the consequences. Are you aware of the decisions you make? Of the reasons you make them for? I'm not the one who needs a few moments of private time after every experiment that has a child screaming in pain."

What little color remains in Pollard's face is slowly draining away with every word. "How can you say that?" His voice is almost like the whispers now, weak and dead and as if coming from a different world. "What are you even ‒ I, I never ‒"

"Are we not going to talk about your youngest child, then?" Gaster interrupts the stuttering, his left eye opened wide in feigned curiosity. "How old were they when they died, six, seven, something like that?"

The pause is short and heavy. "Th-they didn't die." Sans carefully frees his finger from Six' deathgrip and scoops him up into his arms instead, shuffling backwards and expecting to hit a wall any second. "What, what are you talking about? My family ‒ m-my children are alive and healthy, what the fuck are you talking about?!"

"Oh, I see. My mistake. So this is one of the few timelines where you actually managed to restrain yourself."

Pollard's whole body is trembling, shaking, but his gaze flies past Gaster towards nothing, an almost numb expression on his face. "I don't know what you're talking about."

Strangely satisfied with this reaction, Gaster slowly smiles wider and wider, until his face is a wrinkled grimace, tinted red. "I've always wondered, Dr. Pollard," he says so softly that Sans shudders painfully and presses Six closer to his chest, "maybe you can answer this for me: What is it about coming from a broken home that makes you want to treat your own children the same way you were treated?"

It jolts Pollard out of his dazed state as he stumbles a step back. His throat works soundlessly for a moment, his eyes now fixated on Gaster as if he has never seen anything as disgusting as him. "How dare you." Sans expected him to yell, but the words leave his mouth so calmly, so low and scratchy, that he sounds like a completely different person. "How ‒ Just because you read my file, you ‒ what, you think you know anything about me? I'm not like that, I'm better than ‒"

"Better?" A loud, cruel laugh breaks out of Gaster. "The most noble thing you ever did in this timeline was to run and hide. To turn away from your family and bury yourself in work so you wouldn't have to face all the things that you so desperately wanted to do to your own children." Somehow, at some point, he stepped unnoticeably closer to Pollard and is now leaning over him, the hands behind his back twitching with anticipation and a small, red drop rolling from his eye down his cheek. "But in the end, no matter how tightly you cover your ears, close your eyes and yell that you're a good person ‒ you are still the very same man that, in a slightly different timeline, fucked and killed his youngest child."

A sharp breath escaping through his clenched teeth, Pollard suddenly surges forward, grabs Gaster's collar and pulls him down. With bared teeth and a fire in his eyes that Sans has only ever seen from Gaster himself, he tightens his grip around the taller man's shirt with every growled word. "You. Don't know _shit_. About me!"

Even with Pollard's hands clasped so tightly around his collar, pulling the fabric taut around his neck, Gaster still manages a condescending smile and chuckle. "Wrong again," he sing-songs softly, almost kindly. "As always. See, time and space don't matter with this." He drags a finger through the line of red liquid on his face, thin tendrils of smoke curling upwards as the magic burns away his skin. "I know how scared and excited you were when Project SA-N5 failed. A construct without any real soul or emotions, one that looked exactly like a child? That would have given you license to do whatever the hell you wanted to it, right, without any of those pesky moral concerns getting in the way of your _fun_."

With a hoarse, utterly enraged shout, Pollard throws himself forward. His fist slams into Gaster's jaw and rips his head to the side, the force of the impact making him lose balance. He tumbles backwards, pulls Pollard with him who is still clutching his collar with one hand, the other raising in the air again and smashing down to collide with his face.

Sans runs, the sound of plastic, glass and metal crashing to the floor following behind him from where Gaster hits a table with his back, his hand throwing equipment to the floor in its hectic search for purchase. Six is wailing against Sans' collarbone, tears and snot already coating his face and Sans knows Pollard hates that sound, he hates it so much, they have to get away. He dives under a table at the far end of the lab, face pressed into Six' blanket.

The table under Gaster is pushed to the side and they fall to the floor. Pollard's fist comes down on Gaster's face. "I'm!" Again. "Not!" And again. "Like!" A dusty tooth is knocked out. "That!" Gaster's nose crunches as it bends to the side.

A whisper from another world raises in Sans' ear, a child's voice, screaming, begging, Sans wants to scream with it. Chara is throwing themselves against the restraints of reality in his head, their fingernails scratching at the inside of his mind, hollering curses and bloody murder, voice breaking, tears streaming, _kill the monster! Kill it, kill it, kill it! Kill all of them!_

Pollard's face is pure wrath, pure fear, pure wide-eyed, insane desperation and both his hands close around Gaster's throat. White and red dust raises in clouds into the air as he pulls the choking, twitching man up by his neck and crushes his head down onto the floor with a sickening crack.

"I'M NOT LIKE HIM!"

Gaster barely struggled at all, but now, after two more cracks to his skull, his hands fall limp to the floor. The grin on his face is crooked, hurt, and covered in red. His eyes are blank.

Alphys is holding Sans' hands, presses them tightly over Six' ears, her back turned to the creators. But Sans still sees. Sees Pollard's arms tremble with the effort of crushing Gaster's throat between his hands. Watches his shoulders hunch over, watches Gaster's body convulse unconsciously, limbs twitching, twisting ‒ slowing. Stopping.

The crying child's whisper is loud in the following silence, louder than Six' whimpers, muffled against Sans' body. Everything is still, and slow, and heavy. Pollard's hands are loosening, falling, like moving through water. He breathes. Watches. Stands up so slowly, weight in his arms pulling him down, and stares at his hands. Whispers rise and fall. Sans thinks they might be real.

And Chara is still raging in his mind, and Alphys is still closing her eyes, and Sans sits torn between them for long minutes while Pollard loses his breath, stands there gasping, whispering, hands clenching into fists in front of his eyes and then loosening again.

Gaster isn't moving. A pool of red magic, sprinkled with dust, is slowly growing larger underneath his head.

Ignoring both Alphys' insistence that he stay and Chara's fevered battle cry, Sans crawls out from underneath the desk. He puts Six back into the crib, then slowly approaches Pollard.

"I'm not like him," the man whispers to his hands, covered in dust, words catching on his teeth on their way out, sliced into sharp-edged pieces. "I'm not... I'm not..."

Sans tugs at his lab coat. Only very lightly, but Pollard jumps and turns, drops to the floor as if he was struck down. He is on his knees in front of Sans, head bowed toward the floor that his hands are pressed against, shoulders shaking violently. "I'm not like him, I'm not like him, I'm not like him ‒"

When Sans steps closer and taps him on the shoulder, everything stops. The shaking, the whispering. He looks up at him instead, eyes wide and wet, and his breath hitches in his throat. Sans makes sure to meet his eyes. It's hard, he hasn't done that in a while.

Maybe Pollard realizes that, appreciates the effort maybe, because something on his face shifts, changes, and he pulls Sans closer by his shoulders with dusty hands. A small sob falls from his lips and he immediately bites down on them, shakes his head helplessly as the trembling starts up again.

Sans watches, a bit at a loss over what to do as one poorly suppressed sob after another makes its way out of Pollard's throat. He doesn't feel like he understands what any of this was about ‒ but at the same time, he has the whispers in his ear and even _she_ is back, angrily clenching the fingers of his right hand into a fist, mantras of _wrong wrong wrong_ and _kill it kill it kill it_ in his mind.

Still. He drops his head forward, Pollard almost scrambling away from him in shock when their foreheads touch. He's so sad, so angry, losing his mind almost the same way Sans did in The Room. Someone has to try and comfort him, even if the whispers don't want him to.

It makes it worse, for a moment. Pollard's breathing gets funny, turns into choking, gasping. But then the will to hold back bleeds out of him and he pulls Sans into his arms, face pressed into his neck and crying loud tears against his skin. Sans tries to pat his back a little, but his embrace is like a vise, locking his arms in place with little room to maneuver at all. So instead, he just lets the man cling to him, ignoring the stickiness and slight burning of the mixture of dust and magic covering the entire front of his lab coat.

"I'm not like him," he begins anew, quieter, almost without any voice at all and it sounds more like a promise now, an oath of some kind. Especially when he leans back, baring his blotched face streaked with tears, and stares straight into Sans' eyes, a sudden iron will in his yellowed irises as he repeats, slowly, intensely: "I am not like him. I never will be." Saying it seems to calm him down. He nods to himself, whispers to himself a few more times. Sans can watch his tears dry up, can nearly see part of his mind returning.

Comforting people is easier than he thought.

It still takes a while until Pollard is ready to let go of him again, but when he is it happens fast. He jumps to his feet, steps back and shakes out his shoulders, pulling his hands all over his face in a futile attempt to clean it; all it does is smear the dust around.

Then, he turns to look at Gaster.

Sans can't see the creator's face, his head is turned to the side away from him. He is quite grateful for that to be honest. Just the way that the man's skull is oddly caved in at the back, with thin lines of dust still trickling to the floor from the cracks in his white skin, has him swallowing down bile. Pollard's knuckles are almost entirely skin-less, the white flesh and rudimentary bone-like structure underneath faintly visible. If that's what the winner of this particular skirmish looks like, then Sans really doesn't want to see more of the loser.

Pollard not-so-discreetly wipes his nose on his sleeve, rubs his eyes and then takes a deep breath. "Alright," he says, still shaky, but much more resolved now. With quick, unfaltering steps, he walks over to the office and props the door open.

Sans immediately flinches and looks away, shoulders drawn up and teeth clenched tightly. Even though it's the office now, it will always be The Room for Sans. He doesn't like looking at it at all.

"Sans," he hears Pollard's tired, but surprisingly soft voice. "Sans. It's not for you, I promise. Just ‒ I promise." There is a bit of shuffling, a low grunt, then a sigh. "Come on, I need your help with... with this."

Very carefully, Sans looks up. Pollard has Gaster's lifeless body grabbed by the armpits, making his arms dangle oddly in the air. It appears he wanted to drag him backwards across the floor and to the office, but after only a few steps his little remaining strength gave out. Sans stares and stays where he is.

Mumbling a string of tired curses, Pollard drops the body back to the floor and rubs his forehead in quiet frustration. Then he looks at Sans again and snaps his fingers a few times, very slowly starting to speak in hands. "Promise. Not you. No pain. Promise." It's bad and clunky, but just the fact that he went through the trouble of signing it for Sans, even though he doesn't like to do that and isn't good at it, makes it a little easier to step forward.

"Thank you," he sighs out loud again, picking Gaster back up the way he did before. "Just grab the feet and help me carry it. Just ‒ to get it out of the way for now."

Sans is small and weak, so even with his help, Pollard is huffing in exhaustion as they carry the thin, but tall body across the room. He can't lift it up very far and it sags in the middle, dragging across the floor. Sans stares at the black, pointy shoes on the feet he's holding and absolutely nothing inside of him knows how to feel about any of this.

Even with a promise made in hands, he can't actually make himself enter the office, so he drops the feet immediately when they reach the threshold. Pollard doesn't say anything, but Sans can't see if he maybe looks annoyed about that because he turns away from The Room as quickly as he can. Still, he can't avoid a glimpse of the white walls and the round little holes in the ceiling and it almost pulls him back in. With his back to the door and his face to the crib, he gulps down deep breaths of air, hands on his bent knees and fingers itching to rip out the hair that falls in front of his eyes. He scratches the left side of his skull instead, where there is no hair left in the first place, and tries not to count threads in his head.

The sound of the door closing behind him makes him jump, but it's alright because Six keeps peacefully babbling to himself, holding onto the bars of the crib and gently rocking himself from one side to the other in his attempt to turn from his back to the side. When Pollard steps around Sans and back into his field of view, he has calmed down a little. They both have.

Pollard took off his dusty lab coat marred with splatters of red magic. Good. Sans knows that other monsters don't bleed, only him and humans, but seeing that other red liquid drip out of the cracks in a person still made him queasy. He also avoids looking at the stain, smeared all over the floor from where they dragged Gaster away.

The creator's eyes are dry again, though he's still sweaty, still nervous. His hands are bandaged, but Sans sees the fingertips twitch. "You, uh..." he starts up awkwardly, scratching behind his quivering ears. "Did you hear all that? No, what, of course you did, what am I saying. I mean... " The breath he takes is loud and shaky, just before he turns to face Sans completely and looks down on him with wide eyes. "You didn't understand what that was about, did you?"

Sans is not looking at his eyes again. Makes him feel almost as queasy as the red magic, what with so many whispers in his mind building up to shouts as soon as he looks at them. The small ones are scared, many are angry, and the ones that sound most similar to _her_ are the most frantic, the most desperate, screaming at him to run _run RUN!_

Silly voices. Where is he supposed to run? He'll just find him and beat him to death.

So he thinks about the question, the task, the test. Did you understand what that was about? What's the wrong answer, what's the right one? Sans doesn't even know which one he is supposed to give. Pollard's hands might be wrapped in soft bandages now, but he thinks it'll probably still hurt if he hits him with it. Gaster's caved in skull looked painful. Sans imagines it on Six and almost hurls.

He feels like he shouldn't answer what the voices are yelling about. That seems like the wrong thing, the dangerous thing. If he's being honest, he also doesn't really understand it. So he stares at Pollard's shoulder and forms his answer with his hands. "Timelines. Multiverse hypothesis." Because he read about this, he knows about this, this is the part of the conversation that he somewhat understood.

It's what makes him think now that the voices aren't from around here at all.

For a moment, he thinks that was the wrong answer, because Pollard looks confused, or hurt, or ‒ something. He has to turn away and rub his eyes for a bit, but then he smiles at Sans. "Yes, exactly. Multiverse. We just, well, Gaster and I simply had a disagreement over... the importance of... uh, the effect of alternate timelines on the current..." His smile and his stuttering both fade out slowly. He sighs. Looks at the stain on the floor. Glances at the closed door. "One way or another," he mumbles, nodding to himself. "It was necessary."

Of course. Everything the creators do is necessary. They say it so often, it simply must be true.

Chara snorts.

Sans is sent back to his bed to wait while Pollard cleans things up. The protective gear he puts on seems a little over the top, considering he already had all that red magic all over his skin and clothes ‒ but it's probably better to be extra careful by this point. He pulls a whole bunch of machines and decontamination equipment with him to the red corner of the lab and when he's done there a few hours later, it's not half as red anymore. Then he's busy on Gaster's phone for a while, which he must have taken from his pocket at some point when Sans wasn't looking. Then they both sit in the kitchen and quietly, tiredly chew on a pair of sandwiches.

The office, The Room, including whatever lies inside it, is being ignored for now. They're both good at that.

And if there happens to be an awkward moment when Pollard almost touches Sans' arm and they both jerk back as if burned, then neither of them sees the need to mention it.

* * *

Pollard is very busy looking at the sample of magic that he pulled out of Sans' eye. He does nothing else for days, just gets up in the morning, puts the safety goggles and the plastic gloves on and begins testing the cyan liquid. Drop by drop he runs it through machines, tests chemical reactions, analyzes it under the microscope. With hunched shoulders and a crabby expression on his face he can spend hours just brooding over that microscope and taking notes. Every once in a while he turns a dial by one micrometer and then has to take completely new notes as he starts all over again.

Every time he uses up one of the tiny cyan drops, Sans has to press a hand over his good eye and strongly will his fingers not to scratch at it. If he runs out ‒ well, Sans just really hopes that he doesn't run out.

It's becoming a little too much like The Room again, now that nobody needs to do experiments on Sans anymore. Now he just sits on his bed during the long hours that Six is asleep, waiting for him to wake up so he can at least somewhat entertain himself. His crib is already standing right next to Sans' bed now, so he can always look at him even when he's asleep. Knowing that he's still there helps a little, because he wasn't with him in The Room. Still, sometimes it gets too quiet, too lonely, then the walls are too close again and the voices too loud again.

Sometimes Pollard's shoulder twitches when a voice gets especially loud in Sans' ear. It happens most often with one of the small, high pitched ones. But he never says anything about it and never reacts to any of the other voices, even if they get much louder than that small one.

None of the voices ever become as clear again as they were while the needle was stuck in Sans' eye. It might have something to do with the code he thought he saw, or the red glowing magic that's now much more subdued, or any number of things that might or might not be really happening. Shaking walls, booming sounds in the distance, Alphys drawing pictures on the tiles next to him and Chara banging their head against the wall, bored, so bored.

It's Alphys that doesn't want him to go take another peek behind the curtain, a look into Gaster's corner where the red came from in the first place. Chara is the one who brings it up now and again, always with the quick admission that, yes, snooping around where they're not allowed first made things go so wrong. But still, they keep going, aren't you curious? Don't you want to know things? This is new and interesting, how can you just sit here and not even take one look at it?

Sans stares at Six' sleeping form, the white hair that's getting thicker with time and the small, twitching fists on the pillow next to his head. The first time he went snooping, he ended up almost murdering Six. And then being thrown in The Room.

Alphys and Sans turn their backs to the red corner and agree not to do that again. Chara grunts at them in frustration.

Pollard gets nervous after a while. "You're, uh ‒ a bit bored, huh?"

Sans looks down at the sandwich pieces he arranged into the image of a dog on the floor. It has a very cute cheese nose, he's kind of proud of that one. But Pollard has that tight look on his face that means he's trying not to be angry, so Sans quickly cleans everything up again. Six whines in protest when he rips the piece of lettuce away that he was sucking on with his gums.

While he was busy with that, Pollard left the kitchen and is coming back in now, dropping a large black laptop on the table. "Here. I think that was supposed to be for you, anyways. Just ‒ keep yourself busy, alright? Try not to destroy anything."

It makes the voices nervous and Chara very angry that Pollard is being so nice to Sans now. Sans thinks it's better than before, and now he has a laptop, so he's not going to complain. Even if it does feel weird now every time he catches the man looking in his direction, and if it's just incidental.

Sans sits on his mattress with his back to The Room, legs crossed and Six nestled in between them, the laptop propped up on the bunch of rolled up shirts that's usually his pillow. Even though he has been observing other people using electronics his entire life, this is the first time he gets to do it himself and it turns out to be a little more complicated than he expected. Pollard doesn't explain anything at all, just dumps the old, slow machine in front of him and goes right back to the vial of cyan.

It's something that Sans forgot about in The Room, and even before that for a while ‒ but he likes learning. Figuring out how the computer works takes a few hours on his own, but it's fun. He finds odd games with colorful cards that jump across the screen and Six loves those, he always tries to grab them and squeals in delight when they fly away underneath his fingers. Sans explains to him how the games themselves work, but it's difficult when his hands are busy operating the computer and Six isn't facing him.

Well. It's not like he really understands Sans' hand signs anyways. Though he's been trying to mimic them lately, getting more reluctant about practicing actual speech at the same time and Sans is both proud and worried. He wants Six to talk, it will probably be better for him, right? When other people don't have difficulty understanding him? But he's also secretly excited about the prospect of Six learning sign language and the two of them being able to properly talk to each other. So he encourages both the signs and the sounds he makes, even if it gets a little exhausting to act so very positive all the time.

Luckily, he doesn't have to fake it too much. When he's sitting with Six in his lap, keeping him upright with one hand, exploring the writing program he just found with the other and burying his nose in Six' hair, he really does feel more positive than at any other time. It puts a round little source of warmth right in his stomach.

There is a rattling and rumbling sound from outside the lab, he thinks, but he doesn't spare it a second thought. He can make the letters he writes appear in different styles on the screen! Six doesn't seem very interested in that, but then again he's often content just cuddling with Sans and sucking on his thumbs, so he probably doesn't mind if Sans gets a bit overzealous with the fonts for a while.

He starts a little when he actually finds himself. And not in the metaphorical or spiritual sense. There is actually a font called Comic Sans. Six doesn't really get his excitement but plays along anyways, joining in the silent giggling with his loud one and bouncing up and down along Sans while he points at the screen.

"It's me," Sans clumsily signs to him over and over again, until Six is screeching so happily at the font that Sans almost feels he actually understood.

He nearly falls over backwards when Six looks at him over his shoulder, one hand pressed against the screen and the other awkwardly forming "Me?"

The clanking off to the side is growing a bit louder, but Sans can't look, he's busy staring at Six, who repeats the gesture. It's by no means perfect, but also can't possibly be mistaken for anything else. Now he even adds a high-pitched, drawn out "eee" sound, insistently patting the screen all the while.

The little ball of warmth in Sans' stomach suddenly grows three sizes. He feels his grin stretching almost painfully all across his face and when he quickly lifts Six up in his arms, nuzzling his nose and ruffling his hair, a very small, very soft sound of happiness escapes him. Six immediately widens his black eyes, squealing loudly and pressing both his hands to Sans' mouth, completely astonished by the fact that he can actually make sounds with that too. Sans' giggle while he hugs Six closer to his chest remains silent, but that doesn't make it the least bit less sincere.

As soon as he calms down a little, he hectically leans back over to the laptop, going through the names of the fonts in search for anything with 'six' in it.

But you don't even like that name, Chara complains.

Sans falters. That's right, six is a number, not a name.

Pick a different one, Alphys whispers.

If they can't go with Strawbeary ‒ _no!_ Chara says decidedly ‒ then they can at least name him after the very best font, the coolest one that Sans could find. He scrolls through the list with narrowed eyes, searching while his mouth is still being inspected by Six, who pulls at his lips and touches his teeth with the sort of intense, serious curiosity that makes Sans feel all soft inside.

When he finds the font he was looking for, he interrupts Six' work to turn him back around, waving away his burbled protest. He writes the new name with the coolest font and makes it so big it takes up the entire screen. "Papyrus," he spells with his hands and then, because spelling really is too difficult for the newly named Papyrus, shortens it to just the sign for the first letter like he does for his own name.

But no, that's not enough. He deserves a better sign than that. Sans doesn't have to think very hard before he carefully lets go of Papyrus, making sure he's sitting up by himself, then scoots around until he can face him. He lifts his left hand with the palm turned inwards, thumb and index finger touching to form a circle and the other fingers pointing up. Then he draws a swift, elegant circle above it with his right, only instead of touching the fingertips together like with the other hand, he points forward with the index and down with the middle finger, as in the letter P.

He repeats it many, many times and Papyrus watches, waving his arms up and down, unable to mimic it, but knowing full well that he's being communicated with. It's a complicated sign for Papyrus' clumsy little fingers, but with time, he'll surely be able to do it.

Sans didn't base it on the sign _perfect_ for no reason, after all.

* * *

"Well, he's doing better than I expected."

Sans doesn't know how long they've sat there, practicing Papyrus' new name; only that suddenly, after the weird noises finally died back down, a voice brutally rips him out of this happy place and he flinches so hard he pulls a muscle on his neck.

Grynn has her arms crossed, head tilted to the side, and looks down at him and Papyrus with keen eyes. "Did you make any changes to the isolation experiment?"

Sans rubs his neck and quickly looks away. One more thing he sees and hears that isn't real. This one is a lot less pleasant than Chara and Alphys.

Pollard comes up behind her and ‒ talks to her? "No, actually. It was very effective, but recently he's been slightly improving again."

"Obviously, that is to be expected." And there is Freeda. Well. It was nice having a mind while it lasted.

And as the three creators talk among each other, discussing an experiment that Sans doesn't know anything about, he does of course realize that, yes, this is real. They look different than he remembers them, older, more tired, they're not wearing lab coats. He doesn't think his brain would make that up. So the noises he heard ‒ that must have been the Core shifting to make room for the elevator coming through.

Are they staying? It's going to get really crowded. Hopefully he doesn't have to give up his bed. It's already hardly deserving of the name 'bed,' but it's better than the floor.

"So," Grynn switches topics after a while and Sans reluctantly starts listening in again. Even though he's not sure he ever wants to know what the creators talk about ever again. "Where is he? And, you know ‒ what happened? Really?"

Pollard's face quickly grows dark again and Sans doesn't waste time to pick up Papyrus and flee to his crib. Hopefully in a way that doesn't look too much like actual fleeing, that might upset the man even more. "I told you what happened," he is saying now, and it's suddenly so scary how his voice lost all of its nasally whiny quality over the last two years.

"What you wish us to believe happened," Freeda corrects, completely unimpressed as always. "You do not actually expect us to not question the obvious holes in your story?"

"No, I simply expect you to do that silently."

They don't know what Sans knows, what the voices know, that's the only reason Grynn doesn't inconspicuously cower like Sans does behind the crib and just laughs instead. "That's not how the line of succession works here. You don't become the king just because you killed the king."

Or do they know?

Pollard lifts his hands, defensively. "Can we stop it with the stupid power games, just once? Or is that actually what you came here for?" With a sigh, he takes a few steps towards the office, the others reluctantly following him. Sans quickly cowers down even more, peering at Papyrus for a second ‒ who is sitting with his legs stretched out, leaning against the bars on the opposite side and practicing his name sign. The tip of his tongue is shoved between his lips in concentration.

Sans takes a short moment to melt on the inside, then he decisively concentrates on the conversation again.

They're standing around a monitor that Sans can't see from here. "There are no vital signs," Pollard says, a distinct tone of frustration in his voice. "None. But he isn't turning to dust either, so I don't know. I never heard of anything like this."

"It can, on occasion, take up to three days," Freeda says. "How long has he been like this?"

"Eight days. That can't be normal, right?"

"No, it isn't," Grynn agrees. "Most obvious guess would be it has something to do with that human magic that made him go insane enough to attack you in the first place." She throws Pollard a look while she says that, one that unambiguously tells him just how much bullshit she smells on that story. "Did you do a BAS scan? It must have done something to his soul."

"I haven't, and I don't think we should, frankly. I'd actually like to avoid going in there, if at all possible," Pollard answers. "That red magic has unusually high emission rates. We'd be exposed to an inadvisably high dose during the time it takes to perform even a standard BAS scan."

"You are saying he was exposed long enough for his body to give off its own red magic emissions?" Freeda asks, just a hint of disbelief evident in her tone.

Pollard hears it too, apparently, and he doesn't appreciate it. The creases on his forehead deepen dramatically as he turns to her with a scathing look. "As I just said, that soul has emission rates beyond anything we've ever seen. With stats like that it's not about the time he spent in its vicinity, it's a matter of pure quantity."

"Alright, what's your bloody plan then?" Grynn always had a short fuse, but it must have gotten even shorter over the years and Sans can't help but worry about her now.

(Even if the voices have difficulty making themselves be heard after most of the red magic was locked away, he can still sense them getting angry and insisting that he worry about himself and Papyrus instead.)

"You're just gonna leave him in there? He's obviously not entirely dead yet and, damn it, we need him for this. We all know that."

"I don't, actually," Pollard insists with a glare. "The way he was by the end, he was no help at all. He made everything worse! Tore a fucking hole in time or something, I don't even know, and all while I was performing a really delicate experiment that, unlike the one he was doing, was actually important for our success. So yeah, in my professional opinion, he can just rot in there, at least until we're done with the work that we've dedicated the last few decades of our lives to."

Freeda interrupts Grynn just as she gets ready to keep arguing. "I would usually not agree to leave a colleague to such an uncertain fate," she says, ignoring Pollard's incredulous look and how he pointedly gestures at himself, "but in this case, a solution for the ME crisis must take absolute priority. Waterfall is a wasteland by now, hundreds of people are dying as we speak and not even the CORE facility is guaranteed to reliably remain stabilized." She pushes up her round glasses, folds her hands behind her back and looks between her colleagues with grim resolve. "We need a solution, yesterday."

It's tense for a few seconds, but then Sans relaxes and stands back up when they all nod to each other. Seemingly just a moment later, they are all back in their lab coats, wearing gloves and goggles and getting ready to work.

* * *

They throw everything into their research now. Sans can only try to keep himself and Papyrus out of the way as best as he can, but it's difficult. Everywhere he goes new machines show up, new space is needed for new tests. Everything in the lab is moving now, he feels like sitting in the middle of a giant centrifuge and watching things spinning around him with an increasingly dizzying speed.

The tension has Papyrus in a bad mood almost all day long, as well as the fact that he's finally growing some teeth. It has him crying and screaming for many hours a day and in addition to staying out of the way, Sans also has to try and hide from Pollard when he gets too angry. Grynn is a problem as well; he only makes the mistake of letting her close enough to slap Papyrus once. After that, he scurries far away from her if she so much as looks in their general direction.

Sometimes, he dares to hide behind Freeda. Not that she's tall enough to actually hide him, but she doesn't seem as affected as the others by Papyrus' crying and her looks of reproach about what she deems an overreaction has the other two hesitating to do anything when she's near. But she also does a lot of the most delicate work, so she doesn't tolerate him crowding her either.

Everyone loses sleep, but Sans and Papyrus most of all. Papyrus is in pain and constantly hungry because Sans can barely get him to eat anything. Sans has to take care of him all day and doesn't get any of those little plugs that the others put in their ears if they want to sleep, so after only a little more than a week of this, the two of them are beyond exhausted.

He has no idea how the research is going, doesn't bother to try and listen to anything in the slightest. He does suspect now that the tremors he feels occasionally, the shaking walls and the far away booming sounds might actually be real, after what Freeda said about the CORE destabilizing. It should probably be scary, he thinks. But he mostly uses the tiny moments of quiet he gets for sleep, not for feeling things, so he's alright on that front.

When the ongoing discussion between the creators grows louder and louder one day, Sans can't bring himself to care. Papyrus finally cried himself to sleep just five minutes ago, he's with Sans on his mattress and Sans lies curled up on his side around him, their souls as close as possible to each other. He found out that this is the most calming position to fall asleep in. For both of them.

When the discussion stops and shifts into hushed theorizing, eager planning and calculating, he's just about to drift off to sleep and only the sudden change in volume keeps him awake, if not aware, for a moment longer.

When the sound of footsteps begins growing louder, he takes just one second to listen and determine that it's Freeda who's approaching there, before losing his focus again. He would have forced himself fully awake if it had been Grynn or Pollard, but Freeda is as safe as he can get in here.

Only when Papyrus is unceremoniously ripped out of his arms and Sans wakes up with a panicked yelp, scrambling after him just a second too late, does that assumption prove to be painfully false.

* * *

 _Trigger warning: This chapter contains non-graphic discussions of pedophilia, underage rape and domestic abuse. To avoid, do not read any of Gaster's and Pollard's dialog starting from Gaster's "So, we will do it like this" and skip until the next line break. To avoid any and all undertones of themes like this, maybe skip the rest of the chapter as well._


	15. REDACTED

**[REDACTED]**

Sans hasn't really used his voice in what seems like forever, but now, he is screaming. He is on his feet within seconds, running after Freeda, after the sound of Papyrus crying in confusion.

Just before he gets close enough to clutch her arm, Pollard's shield bullet pops up right in front of his face and he is thrown on his back.

"Okay, what the hell?" Grynn has her diamond shaped bullets ready and floating in the air around her, trying to glare at both Sans and Pollard at the same time. "I thought he didn't do this shit anymore?"

Pollard is running towards him and Sans hastily scrambles back to his feet, but when he tries to go after Freeda again, the shield switches position in the blink of an eye to block his path. In his utter panic, he summons a row of bones and throws them against the shield with all his might, dashing forward at the same time with his eyes fixed on Papyrus, struggling weakly in Freeda's arms.

The shield shatters, the diamonds rush forward in his direction, Freeda turns with a cold look in her eyes and lifts her free hand to summon her triangles.

And Pollard grabs Sans' arm and twists it back.

Sans' bullets vanish and with a sharp cry, he is forced on his knees. Pollard's foot comes down hard on his back to keep him there.

The part of his mind that remembers The Room yells at him to stop struggling, but Sans only sees Papyrus, sees him in Freeda's arms and that's not safe, he's not safe there and _she's carrying him over to the chair, not the chair, he doesn't deserve that, only Sans does!_ His shoulder screams in pain as he keeps twisting in Pollard's grasp, trying to find purchase with his feet, any way to push himself back to a standing position, but Pollard adjusts his grip, drives his knee into Sans' back and leans on him with all his weight.

Through the panicked haze in his mind, Sans notices the triangles and diamonds disappearing again.

"So, what was the point of the solitary confinement," Grynn starts, deeply annoyed, "if he's still not obedient at all?"

Pollard is huffing with the strain of keeping him down and Sans can hear in his voice that he's fighting a coughing fit. "It wasn't just the confinement, it was that thing as well!" And he nods at Papyrus, who is not outright crying anymore, but whining with soft, distressed sounds as he presses his hands against Freeda, trying to push her away from him. "We made a kind of deal to not use that one, so this right now is completely against the original plan. Sans!" He pulls at his arm with a sharp tug and probably tries to make him look up to him over his shoulder, but Sans does not take his eyes off Papyrus. "Cut it out!"

But Sans doesn't cut it out, doesn't dare to stop fighting, even if he can barely move at all without feeling the bones in his shoulder shift dangerously in a way they're really not supposed to.

"We can't have this kind of complication," Freeda says, reaching for a syringe on the desk next to her.

And now Sans knows that it's not just a sedative to make Papyrus shut up and sleep, he knows they want to do tests now and the realization has him growing ice cold on the inside. He fights against Pollard's grip, against the pain twisting in his shoulder, but he gets shaky now as he can't keep himself from plunging headfirst into a well of fear and panic. Another scream burns his throat and he forces his bad hand to reach back, burying his fingernails in Pollard's arm and tearing on it.

With an angry hiss Pollard tries to move his arm away and the pressure of his knee in Sans' back grows until he has to stop screaming and gasp for breath instead.

He sees Papyrus on the chair, Freeda searches for something to tie him down with because he's too small for the restraints. Sans' eyes are hot and itchy as he watches, still twisting under Pollard's weight and only hurting himself more with every move. The syringe in Freeda's hand is small and thin and glows cyan.

Grynn's hand with the sharp fingernails suddenly clamps down on his neck, he didn't even notice her approaching. His struggles are ceasing slowly, his cheeks are wet and his throat closed off, he knows he can't flee, can't save anyone. Chara's eyes bore into the back of his head and they're full of judgment.

"You're sure we can't sedate him?" Grynn says as she twists Sans' other arm away from Pollard, leaving a small ring of dust under his nails. Even with his soul shrinking in his chest at the sight of Papyrus in Sans' chair, looking at that tiny bit of pain that he caused the man is strangely satisfying.

The voices agree.

Pollard makes a strangled, annoyed sound. "Yes! It was impossible to keep the cyan magic contained during extraction, it filled up the entire room. That's what caused all the backlash: The fact that it mixed with the red magic and had a direct connection to an organism." He waves his hand at Sans. "Even without the red stuff here, we'll have cyan emissions all over the place during this procedure and we have no idea how it will react if combined with a sedation as heavy as we'd need to keep him down now. I'd rather not risk another backlash."

"Well, what do we do then?" Grynn is much stronger than Pollard, who has to take a step aside now and give in to his coughing fit. She wraps one arm across Sans' throat and pins his arms to his side with the other. Even with his feet finally connecting to the floor again, he can barely move at all.

Papyrus is whimpering and stretching a hand out towards Sans, but Freeda grabs it and ties it down. Sans' breath hitches in his throat, he almost loses his balance again trying to kick at Grynn's legs behind him.

"This will not take a very long time," Freeda says now, pulling up a disassembled machine from the back ‒ and Sans wants to scream again, because even when it's in pieces he recognizes it, recognizes the drill-like form and the needle at the end of one metallic arm. He almost feels that needle back in his eye, cold and piercing and this is _wrong wrong wrong_ they're not supposed to do that to Papyrus, not to him, never to him, only Sans deserves that!

He thinks he might have made a sound, because Papyrus looks at him and starts babbling again, a string of loud syllables and his tied down hands are making little grabbing motions. It almost feels like he's trying to _comfort him_ ‒

"Likely not longer than an hour. We can lock him away during that time without risking too much overexposure to red magic."

Attempting to swallow a cough and failing miserably, Pollard turns towards Freeda with a scathing look and gestures helplessly, making some croaking sounds that are trying hard to become words. Freeda, somehow, seems to understand what he wants to say.

"I know about the quantity issue, but as it is right now he'll be exposed to ME one way or another. We only have three protective suits, after all. So it is only a question of whether he should stay here, exposed to cyan magic and at risk of interfering with the experiment, or if he should be locked away where he can't do any damage, but will be exposed to red magic. I would offer to vote on it, but I find it rather obvious which option is the preferable one."

Something scratches at the inside of Sans' head, something sharp that listens and understands, that knows what this means and tries to tell the rest of him. But the rest of him doesn't want to, it's trembling and twitching and chanting _save Papyrus save Papyrus save Papyrus..._

Then, someone presses a button.

And _hiss_ , go the vents.

And Sans' mind goes void.

He goes limp but doesn't fall, hands lift him, move him. The rushing of thick water in his ears is the only sound left and that's good, he doesn't need to hear the rest. The void is inside his head and on the outside, all is gray and white, it's better this way, it's easier not to be bothered by anything this way.

He is moved around and he still can't hear but there is a shrill wailing in his head, a thousand voices crying out. _Her_ arm, his right, prickles and twitches, catches the doorframe as it passes by, he can feel _her_ yell in his mind, so angry and scared. _She_ could hold them, he thinks, if it was only up to _her_ , but it's Sans' arm too and that's always been the problem, hasn't it? His fingers are numb and lost in gray, and _hers_ can't compensate for his weakness. They slip off the frame, drag along the wood.

White walls lean towards him, welcome back, welcome home.

With empty eyes he almost sees the paths his continuous steps indented into the smooth white floor.

There is a dark spot on the wall and a dreamy pain in his head silently sings to him that his skull perfectly fits over that.

The door falls shut.

The lights are still on.

He's back in The Room.

Chara's laugh is piercing and insane. Sans wants to hug it to his chest and let it fill him up from inside.

* * *

... fifty-eight, fifty-nine, sixty. Make a knot. That's three rows. Count the threads.

Chara stopped laughing, they're stuck in the corner now. We're not looking at the books, they tell him, or any of the furniture. They're not sure how exactly, but they do know it's a trick just like the monitors, the second we go near them they'll somehow disappear.

So Sans' fingers just keep moving over the floor, counting threads, making knots into the air, they took his blanket but that's alright, the knots are in his mind anyways. Alphys is hiding somewhere. She probably has the right idea with that.

One, two, three, four, breathing in.

Five, six, seven, eight, breathing out.

He pictures the numbers, written in Papyrus. A few he tries in Comic Sans, but they're not as cool. The Papyrus ones are good, they make his soul slow down with every breath and slowly coax Alphys and Chara back towards him.

They sit next to his head that is pressed against the cold floor, his fingers slowly forgetting their little airy dance of flipping threads and making knots.

The door. Is still closed. No sound. Where is Papyrus?

A final, calming, deliberate breath pushes the hair covering his face up into the air, lets it flutter around for some seconds.

Seconds, seconds, seconds. Not threads. Get it right. You're alright.

Don't you remember? It's safe here.

Well, that doesn't make it better, Chara snaps. Papyrus is still out there with them!

Alphys pats Sans' cheek and it ends up salty and wet. Get up, she whispers. Papyrus doesn't deserve that.

The walls bend back just a little from where they were pressing against Sans' sides, where the ceiling was weighing on his back but is now carefully pushed up again as he moves, shaking under the pressure of heavy, black, viscous air on his neck.

His hands, pressed hard against the tiles underneath him, leave a web of little cracks ‒ and red trickles out of it.

Red falls from above, makes round drops of color on the floor. With each drop there's a voice that gets louder, clearer, just a tiny bit. It doesn't actually help him understand anything, they were practically silent before and now they're just whispers.

Still, they are there, they are back and the first time he heard them was when there was a needle sucking cyan out through his eye. The same needle that, as far as he knows, is pointed at Papyrus right now on the other side of the door.

With a last loud huff he pushes himself up on his knees, forcing the walls and ceiling back into their places. For now.

The red is painting thin lines on the white walls, flowing upwards and sideways however it pleases. They cluster around the corners of The Room, forming a labyrinth of geometric forms that swirls in place sluggishly.

On one side of the desk that wasn't here when it was Sans' Room, parts of the wood slowly chip away, begin tumbling to the floor and then turn into strings of numbers with endless decimals that a wafting through the air, mixing with the gleaming specs of dust. Dust that billows up from the floor in thick clouds and catches every ray of cold, white light.

Don't look, Alphys whispers.

No, look, Chara says. Just don't care.

Sans doesn't listen to either of them.

Gaster's body is spread out on the floor, all awkwardly bent limbs, coated in fine, white powder. Sans doesn't even move one bit but his breath alone must be enough to move the air, to make the soft powder rise up in broad spirals and then lose itself in the red that's bleeding into The Room.

Like veins it stretches from the walls, the red; it comes from nowhere, starts in the middle of nothing, splits reality apart for a short distance and tapers out again into the void. It doesn't drop from the ceiling, Sans realizes now, it just drops from anywhere it wants. The desk, the chair, some books, the middle of the room. It drop from the floor to the ceiling and leaves little spatters there, leaves them floating in the air in front of Sans' nose.

And some of it, most of it is bleeding out of the cold pile of limbs on the floor. There is a layer of dust on top of the head so thick that Sans can't tell which part of the skull is still solid and which is not.

Breathing makes dust tickle inside his nose and the back of his throat, he has to cough and quickly press a hand against his lips when he realizes that. Then Chara's insane laugh bubbles up in his chest. Through him it's more of a chuckle, with sharp little breaths that hiss past his teeth.

The red little lake under Gaster's head is growing now, just like Penny's did. It's not as dark though, not as thick, it's a clear and shining red that Sans can feel everywhere.

Biting off the rest of his chuckle, he surges up to his feet. There are things he has to do, he thinks, because Papyrus isn't with him and he has to change that. Thinking is hard in The Room, always was, even when it's not coated in red and filled with whispering voices.

The door is closed.

Nothing can open the door. He tried. It only opened from outside.

Or did it actually? He's back here. Back with the dreams and memories that he can't tell apart from the rest. Did he actually leave? Did the door ever open?

The door tries to tell a knock knock joke, but Sans has had it with that door and its lack of manners. "No!" he yells, slaps both his palms against it to make it shut up. It doesn't have eyes he has to look into or a mouth that moves and distracts, so it's easier to talk here. He talked a lot in here before, he thinks, until his throat was bleeding. Or maybe that was screaming rather than talking.

He digs short and splintered fingernails into the wood, the right hand cramps up as it thinks about clawing its way out. It's silent, so silent on the other side and that's not right, Papyrus would cry for him surely? He would miss him?

Maybe not, but that's not important, there is still the chair and the needle and syringes plunging into tiny souls that don't deserve it.

No magic, no bones to hurt the door, so what does he have instead?

Voices rising up and dying down, a wave of whispered advice wafts over him and he can't make out half of it. Streams of consciousness, he thinks that's what they are, and they fill his head and mix with his own stream sometimes and then there are a thousand streams all flowing in different directions.

The red is piling up, the code is moving faster, changing, and it makes the voices clearer second by second. He just needs to concentrate on those that are moving in the same direction as him.

 _try magic again more magic magic is good is powerful more of it_

No. We did that for hours, for days, for weeks last time. It doesn't work.

 _kick it down can't stand in our way break it break it BREAK IT down no door can hold us_

Sans slams his hands against the door again. Does this look like I can break it down! It doesn't matter if _you_ could, this is my body and we're stuck here and I cannot break down a door with my hands!

 _calm patience no fighting be good my child_

That ‒ that's a stray thought that Sans doesn't even want to look at right now.

His eye starts to feel red again, warm and burning but clear. Maybe he shouldn't push this, maybe it'd be better if he stopped listening, if he stopped letting the red inside ‒ but it's probably not even a choice by this point, is it? He heard the creators, he knows it's all ME and if people could just not be harmed by that if they wished real hard, then what would he even be doing here?

Might as well embrace it then.

Sans turns around, his back leaning against the offending door for a moment and he looks at The Room.

White floor, white ceiling, white walls. It makes his legs tremble and his neck crawl with cold dread, the memory of hands reaching for him, of eyeballs where the monitors used to be, watching, watching as he breaks.

He's not alone this time. They don't have to break again. His elbows hit the door as he pushes himself off of it, he stumbles with his left leg but miraculously, the right one straightens up to give him balance. Is _she_ stronger here this time?

They make the three steps back to the white pile of flesh, black labcoat draped over it and collecting soft dust in the creases. The red lake still slowly grows, extends, stretches towards him as Sans drops back down to his knees.

Some of the voices are scared, worried, they don't want this, but most of the others are pushing him forward. There is no time.

Sans shoves both his hands into the red.

It sizzles, it twists around as if to flee from him, but he makes a fist and catches it. It's not fluid, it's not solid, it's just a warm burning in his hand that makes his eyes tear up, his vision blurry, his insides hot and twisting.

Then the red stops fighting him, wraps around his hands and seeps into his skin. Little curling tendrils wander up his arms, The Room is red red red ‒

A thousand voices from another world stop being whispers. A thousand voices scream into his ears, inside his head, all at once and it takes his breath away.

Red hands pressed to his ears, something wet dripping from his eyes, he tips forward, falls into a sea of red.

One second later, it's silent.

Only an echo of a thousand voices still resonates in his head. There is nothing but blackness.

Sans feels footsteps behind him. How does that work if there's no floor?

The steps feel slow and heavy.

They stop.

"Heya."

The burning in his soul tells him this is wrong. Tells him not to look.

There is a chuckle.

"What? Don't you know how to greet a new pal?"

* * *

Grynn keeps an eye on Pollard.

Not at all times maybe, they have things to do after all, but he's much more unstable than he was before coming down there. Or, to be completely honest, before he walked into that radiated pump room way back when and signed his own death sentence. It has simply become more apparent after she didn't see him for a while and gained a bit of perspective.

Of course they need him here, by now he's the one who knows Gaster's research best between the three of them. Even though she and Freeda tried hard to always be up to date, it had gotten nearly impossible for them to exchange large amounts of information with Asgore having them on surveillance. Every bit of communication with the two scientists stuck in the Core was a huge risk for both Grynn and Freeda, so they fell behind.

And Pollard beating the one person to death who actually, really knew what he was doing here doesn't exactly help. Doesn't instill a lot of confidence either.

So Grynn hovers. She looks over his shoulder at what he's doing and reads over his notes the moment he puts them down somewhere. The tabletops are vibrating slightly in the same rhythm as the dull, far-away rumbling sounds that have started to echo through the Core a few hours ago. So pretending to catch the notes before they go sliding off the table at least gives her an excuse for reading them. Though she wouldn't have had any qualms about it otherwise, of course.

That it's annoying Pollard to death is just a bonus to knowing that his work is still on point.

"Can I help you, Dr. Grynn?" he hisses at her again as they assemble the machine and she occasionally pauses her own work to watch his.

She smiles at him and pretends to read through her own notes, leaning on the desk behind him and looking sharply at the way he calibrates the machine, the single parts shaking in his hands with the vibrations of the floor. "I'm good, how are you doing?" she asks and when she's being that polite, it actually makes him more angry than when she outright insults him. "You sure you got that insertion paradigm set up correctly?"

His shoulders are so tense, Grynn practically expects the muscles to rip themselves to shreds. "Not yet," he says sweetly, throwing a harsh grin at her. "Since I need to first set up the motion protocol. As you would know if you were an expert on this machine, as some other people in this room happen to be."

Freeda passes by them with a thin test tube in her gloved hands, protective goggles covering half her face. "Please get back to work, Dr. Grynn."

With an impatient huff, Grynn glances back at their test subject, calmed down now after throwing a tantrum and a half over being separated from the other one. It took them a long time to connect the necessary wires and cables to his soul, as he doesn't have any previously installed ports like Sans does, and at some point during that procedure he got so quiet they barely had to restrain him anymore.

They also fixed a breathing mask over his face and have him breathing a tiny amount of the weakest sedative they have; as long as it's not enough to put him out but just calm him down, they agreed it probably shouldn't upset the experiment itself too much. So now he's lying there, hardly moving, and watching them with impossibly large eyes and a hitch in his breath. When he notices Grynn watching him, the corners of his mouth reluctantly twitch upwards, only to immediately fall again as another rumble shakes up the lab.

Grynn rolls her eyes and turns away, snapping a finger against one of the measuring monitors hooked up to the subject. "I saw you put a transmission command in here," she says to Pollard, who finally drops his instruments and crosses his arms to give her his full attention. "What's that about?"

Even Freeda pauses in her work for a moment, lifting her head to watch the exchange. She's even more unreadable than usual with her enormous black goggles that make her look like an insect. She is holding down the cyan test tube and the most important papers in front of her, so the continued shaking and trembling doesn't make anything fall to the floor.

Pollard seems like he could really use a deep breath from Six' oxygen mask. "I don't have to explain myself to you. I'm the one leading this experiment, so if you could stop questioning my every move it would be greatly appreciated."

"You realize that you saying you have authority now doesn't necessarily give you any actual authority, right?"

"This is not the time for that sort of discussion," Freeda coldly interrupts. "Concentrate on work." Despite her words, she deposits the test tube with the cyan magic securely in a metal clamp on the table and leaves her place at the desk, standing with her arms crossed and obviously ready to interfere should trouble arise.

"Actually, if this clown decided to transmit the results of our work to God knows where, this is precisely the time to have this sort of discussion," Grynn snaps at her, before turning her scathing glare back to Pollard. "This isn't a matter of leadership, but of you keeping information from us. And sending it to other people, apparently! Where could you possibly be sending this?"

Pollard throws his arms up. "Where do you think!" A particularly loud rumble in the distance has him throwing a nervous look over his shoulder, as if he could actually see the source of the unsettling noises plaguing them today. But he quickly turns back around to face her. "You do remember what we're doing this for, right? No matter what kind of data we produce here today, it's definitely the kind that should go to the king as soon as possible so he can do something about it."

"I'm sorry, did you just conveniently forget that we're fucking fugitives?! You risk giving away our position to send data we don't even know will be useful at all! If ‒ and I'm saying _if_ ‒ we decide to share the results of this, it should be a decision we calmly make together when we've had time to analyze it and calculate the risks."

A desperate sounding chuckle falls out of Pollard's mouth. He tips his head back and covers his face with both hands, furiously rubbing his eyes. "You don't get it at all, do you?"

The odd, resigned grin stays fixed on his face as he gestures to the test subject and at the lab all around them.

"This is it. If anything goes wrong here, we won't have the time to calmly analyze shit. Even if we manage to pull this off without a hitch, you of all people know what it looks like out there. What's the point in sitting on this data, working on it with just the three of us, when we can just give it to Asgore's army of scientists, who can do the same analysis in not even a tenth of the time and who don't have to be stingy with resources. And what if we did all that by ourselves and ended up with the data we needed? We couldn't even form a plan of action from in here, do you know how long that would take? How many people do you think will have died by then, simply because you thought having your name written somewhere on this research was more important than their lives!"

Grynn raises one eyebrow and shakes her head at his little rant. "Will you calm the fuck down?"

Pollard doesn't calm the fuck down. He bares his teeth with a snarl, takes two large, uncoordinated steps towards her and almost loses his balance when another tremor goes through the ground.

"We're not doing this for your fucking glory," he practically spits in her face, finger pointed accusingly at her chest. "Does any of this look even remotely glorious to you? Have you, have you actually looked at what we're doing here lately!" A high-pitched laugh tumbles out of his mouth and Grynn exchanges a pointed look with Freeda. "We're using fucking children as test subjects against their will! We're, we're torturing children in here! We could come up with data that'll solve all of monsterkind's problems for eternity and we'd still not go down in history as anything more than a cautionary tale about the dangers of science."

"This has gone off on a tangent," Freeda finally joins in, though she suddenly seems distracted and watches the monitors which measure the ME levels outside the Core.

"It's a moot point anyways," Grynn sneers at Pollard. "What kind of substance are you on right now, that you think anyone will actually give a shit about how we saved monsterkind, as long as we get it done?"

Pollard's eyes are gleaming with a fever that is likely halfway real and halfway a sign of a lost mind. He shakes his head slowly with a shaky smile. "You'll be nothing when this is over. You'll be nothing more than a bad example for others. Actually that's, that's the fucking least we can be at this point, a story about what not to do. So if we do end up transmitting the results of a failed experiment? I really couldn't care less. At the very least, our work won't have been for nothing."

"Oh well, this all very nice, you finally gained self-awareness. Congratulations. But that doesn't mean you have to go all self-destructive on our asses, especially when that drags us down with you!"

Just as Grynn decides that she's had enough and she swiftly walks over to the computer that's set to transmitting their experiment, there is a sudden, deafening thunder in the distance. The shrill creaking of metal plates grinding against each other echoes through the entire lab.

The movement feels unreal, minuscule, and at first Grynn thinks it's the noise, piercing her eardrums and making her lose her sense of balance.

But then the first chair starts rolling to the side.

Beakers and tubes slide along the tables and crash to the floor.

"Save the resources!" Freeda yells as she already sprints for the cyan magic, catching the test tube just before it can shatter on the floor.

Pollard is flailing his arms and stumbling around in a desperate attempt to remain on his feet and Grynn grinds her teeth, grabs his arm and pulls him with her to the side, holding tight onto one of the tables screwed to the floor.

The shrieking noise of bending metal is cut off with a loud crack and the slow and steady slide abruptly ends; the ground drops out underneath them and then, everything is falling.

Every single thing that isn't bolted down or locked away now tumbles down towards them ‒ tables and chairs, heavy machinery, beds and mattresses from the corner. Grynn sees the heavy fridge crash to the floor and then fall straight through the open kitchen door.

Freeda has never moved as fast as right now. With the test tube clasped in her hands and pressed tightly against her chest, she jumps the short distance towards the two of them over the rapidly tilting floor, the metal arm of one of the machines grazing past her by a hair's breadth.

"Pollard!" she yells, but for once, the man doesn't need instruction ‒ with his free arm he catches the chair with the now wailing test subject still strapped into it, pulls it in towards him so that they're all pressed against the bolted down table with their backs. He throws up a shield in front of them just in time for the fridge to crash against it and then fall off to the side.

The edge of the table is pressing hard against Grynn's back, Pollard is leaning on her with all his weight, his elbow buried in her stomach and she has to gasp desperately for air. Freeda has her feet braced against the table legs and one of her hands is pressed against Pollard's back, trying to push him away from her and Grynn at least a little to keep his and the chair's weight from crushing them.

Six is crying with quiet hiccups, almost completely drowned out by the crashing of glass shards, plastic and metal, the breaking of wood as the falling furniture shatters against the wall behind them. Grynn's wheezing breath is deafening in her own ears, the pain in her spine and stomach repeatedly knocking any air out of her again.

And then they stop falling with a jar, everyone jerking up and forward as the ground suddenly stops moving again.

Pollard falls right onto his face and Grynn almost follows, just about catching herself at the table and eagerly sucking in mouthfuls of air. Freeda keeps herself upright against the chair, where Six is silently panicking, still bound and unable to move.

For a second, they all just listen, staring nervously at the destroyed lab, the floor now at a permanent steep angle. It feels as if they are lightly swinging up and down for a while and the creaking of metal from outside does nothing to calm them down at all, but after a few minutes, everything appears to be somewhat stable again.

Slowly, they all loosen their death grips on whatever they happen to be leaning on, and carefully stand up again.

"Fuck," says Freeda.

Pollard makes a weird sound somewhere between a laugh and a cough. "Yeah. Did ‒ did we just lose a support strut? Did that just happen?"

"Well, we didn't get blown up, so that's something," Grynn wheezes, not quite able to keep the panicky note out of her voice. "Check, uh, check the systems. Are we, we're still operational, yes?"

Her throat still dry and constricted, she straightens up shakily and climbs the slope of the floor upwards to the monitors installed in the walls. Lines of green, glitched out code greet her on most of them, but the ones that still work don't display any emergency messages.

"Seems to be largely superficial damage to the structure," she says over her shoulder, working hard on keeping her voice steady this time. "We lost some of the cooling systems obviously, since, you know, we're now hanging with half our butt in lava!" She can't hold back the slightly crazed laugh that bubbles inside her and then quickly clears her throat. "I think we can compensate with the emergency supply however. All in all, we're about 75 percent operational."

"How long can the remaining struts hold the weight though?" Pollard asks, trembling all over while fighting to somehow stabilize Six' chair so it doesn't go careening down the slope. Freeda is on her feet and pulling as many parts of the extraction machine up from the wreckage as she can.

"Longer than one would assume," she says. "Just the fact that so many of our systems haven't been touched at all by this accident suggests that there are multiple fail safes in place."

"Yes, but if the ME got so far that it actually broke one of our struts ‒!" Pollard is clearly not doing so well with this whole 'not panicking' business, and for once Grynn can't really fault him. "Who's to say the others won't follow in a few minutes?"

Freeda has already collected all the parts of the machine needed for the experiment and is now quickly and efficiently checking them for damage. "Nothing we can do about it from in here," she says. "It's a structural issue, we don't have even half as much influence over that as Asgore's scientists out there in the control room have. Let them handle it."

She lifts her head to direct the black, blank glasses of her goggles directly at Pollard, and even with her eyes completely hidden like that, she still manages to give the very best of reproachful glares. "Were you not the one who insisted on completing this experiment no matter what only minutes ago? I suggest sticking to your newfound principles in this matter."

Grynn takes a deep, calming breath and something pulls painfully at her stomach. The tilt of the lab is starting to make her dizzy just by looking at it, but she still nods decisively to herself and joins Freeda in her attempts to reconstruct the machine.

Pollard takes a little longer and a few more breaths to regain his bearings, then he first shakily checks on Six, shushes him a little and increases his sedative settings by a tiny fraction. Once that is done, he stands still for a moment and confusion is almost visibly hovering over his head.

"Where is ‒ um. Where was the other one again?"

"What do you mean?" asks Grynn.

He shifts in place for a little while, a hand raised to his head, looking around. "I, I don't know. Wasn't there another one, another subject? I'm... sure we had two."

Something cautiously moves way in the back of Grynn's mind, a feeling very similar to that of a word just on the tip of her tongue. Even Freeda lets her hands sink to the desk in thought.

"We would remember that," she says, but she doesn't sound half as confident as she usually does.

"No, but, there was something... right?" Grynn mumbles, rubbing her forehead. "This is weird. Wasn't there ‒ I don't know."

All three of them stand around unmoving for a few seconds, in the midst of their wreck of a laboratory, leaning against the angle of the tilted floor. As they exchange puzzled looks, Grynn's eyes stop at the wall to her right.

She ‒ doesn't remember there being a door in that place.

Especially not an odd, grayish one that seems to flicker in and out of existence right before her eyes.

* * *

It's weird trying to stand up and turn around when there is no actual floor beneath Sans' feet. There is just black, just nothing, and not even directions seem to mean anything right now. He just knows that as soon as he makes the tentative decision to look, he's already spinning in the odd absence of gravity and ends up facing the person who spoke to him.

Person. That's the word he chooses in his mind. It includes everyone after all, monsters, humans ‒

Skeletons.

Probably.

He doesn't understand how, but even though it's a skeleton with just a skull and an unmovable grin, the person somehow manages to look abashed. With one bony hand, the fingertips barely looking out of the long sleeves of his blue jacket, he scratches the back of his skull and bends his knees a little, leaning down towards Sans almost imperceptibly.

"Aw shi ‒ uh. Shucks. Kid. Didn't mean to scare ya."

Sans doesn't think he's scared, actually. Maybe surprised? But in a way, he already understands. There is something familiar in that voice; even though it's the voice of an adult, pitched so much lower than his own. Something about the inflection, something about the eyes and the way he carries himself pulls at a certain string in Sans' mind, drags forth a thought that he then far too easily accepts as fact.

Also, he's wearing phenomenally pink, fluffy slippers and that makes his creepy skull-face immediately about a hundred percent more friendly.

Sans wants to move his hands, sign the question he doesn't really have to ask, but it's this place, the red magic inside and the complete blackness outside him, that just makes the words fall out of his mouth instead.

"We're both Sans?"

Other-Sans shrugs, deepening his smile. "Yep. Though between you and me, you're the one who's a bit more ‒ fleshed out." With a pointed grin he knocks lightly against the top of his skull with one bony finger. Sans can't help but grin back.

Somewhere in the void, a thousand voices groan in appreciation.

Other-Sans snorts. "Come on, throw a guy a bone here," he says into the darkness. And it doesn't make an iota of sense that he somehow manages to wink at Sans, because _skeleton_. But maybe looking for any kind of sense in this situation would be a stronger sign for insanity than just letting go and accepting things how they are.

Though insane it surely is, that's no question. Still, something about this non-place keeps Sans from reacting the way he probably should, keeps him from panicking or being deathly confused or, well, anything as strong as that, emotion-wise. He was in The Room only minutes ago and even a place like this that doesn't really exist is better than that.

There should be more of a sense of urgency to the situation, probably, but this right now is a sort of timelessness that he's never felt before. Not the sort that makes him count threads or fear being put to sleep, but the kind that seems to erase all possibility of consequence.

Case in point: He has been sorting his thoughts quietly inside his head for ‒ likely a while now? It should have been a minute, at least. But Other-Sans is not looking impatient, he just hovers there watching, completely content to wait for any possible sign that the conversation may continue.

Does that have to do with the void though, or just with Other-Sans' personality? Either way, it takes a pressure off his shoulders that he never noticed before but that is always somewhat there when he tries to communicate with anyone. This is better.

"Can I go save Papyrus now?" he asks the grown-up skeleton version of himself, letting go of all the other, unfortunately less pressing questions that he would like to ask as well.

The name makes Other-Sans look to the side real quick and an odd sense of stillness goes out from the void around them. Only when it's gone a second later does Sans realize that it doesn't feel completely empty here. But he stares into the black void and sees nothing, even if the shiver down his spine tells him that, yes, the void stares back.

Other-Sans snaps his fingers once to regain his attention. His grin is still the same but his eyes are warmer now. "In a bit, ok? We still have to figure out how to get you out of that room."

It's not The Room when he says it, just a room. Sans doesn't know why exactly, but he takes note of that with a certain wistfulness.

"And your bro is safe while we're here. We're kinda outside the timeline right now, so it really doesn't matter if we hurry or not."

"His name is Papyrus, not Bro," Sans protests, a little offended that someone who is basically himself would get something like that confused.

"You're right. I'm such a bonehead." He doesn't sound very apologetic, actually.

Still, Sans can't help but appreciate the bad puns. It's ‒ it's been a while since he made his own. He hadn't realized he misses it.

"Well." Other-Sans shrugs, looking to the side again. "It's short for 'brother,' actually. You know what that means?"

Chara had a brother, Sans knows. It's one of those family things, like Alphys having parents and a grandma. Those are still mostly just words to Sans. The sibling stuff is about having the same parents as far as he knows, so he nods.

They stare at each other for a bit with the exact same eyes, and maybe that's why Sans feels like he can read this odd skeleton person much better than other people. He recognizes so many things. It's easy to see that the once again widening grin is a little forced, but not really disingenuous.

Or are they both just always that easy to read?

"Alright. Hey, you wanna go grab dinner with me? Like I said, we've got time."

Sans looks around in the empty black void ‒ and did something just move there in the corner of his eyes? He stares, but everything looks the same and he can't keep track of the one point he wants to look at. So he decides to ignore it and just turns back to Other-Sans. "Where?"

And now the grin is more real again, more open as Other-Sans offers his hand. "Put 'er here, kid. I know a shortcut."

When Sans takes the offered hand without hesitation, Other-Sans gives a regretful little chuckle. "Aw man. If we'd met anywhere else but here ‒ I'm telling ya, this woulda been a lot more hilarious. But anyway... " He gives his hand two lazy shakes in a mock-greeting and then uses his grip on him to drag him forward just a tiny bit.

"Let's go to Grillby's."

* * *

They're not moving.

There are so many bizarre things happening right now that it's hard to decide which one to concentrate on, but this one in particular freaks Sans out a little. Taking Other-Sans' hand and following along his shortcut didn't feel like moving forward, didn't even need any muscle movement on his part. He feels that he's still floating in exactly the same place he was before, only something pulled on the void around and rearranged it underneath them.

The complete blackness retreated to reveal a large, square room in shades of gray around them. A pattern like wood is visible under Sans' feet, but he can't feel it, can't feel his feet touching any kind of floor, can't even really feel any air in his lungs. Gray light flickers around them, it has an oddly warm sense to it, but it doesn't cast shadows on either of them. When they pretend to walk along the floorboards, it's really just the room itself that slides along underneath them ‒ they're both still exactly where they started out, hovering in place and moving their limbs because they feel they have to.

"Don't think too much on it," Other-Sans says, waving at an unusually high stool standing in front of an unusually high desk-like thing near the wall.

A bar, one of the voices supplies with surprising clarity, but then it quickly retreats into silence when Other-Sans glares over Sans' shoulder.

"It wasn't being mean," Sans speaks up, because the voice was just trying to help and it seems unfair to chastise it for that.

Other-Sans shrugs. "Ok."

He climbs one of the stools and almost unconsciously, Sans follows his example, even mimics his movements when he leans his elbows on the bar and loosely intertwines his fingers with each other. There is a black cloud of void behind the bar, vaguely person-shaped and completely unmoving. Even though the place was empty when it first formed around them, Sans has a crawling feeling on his neck that tells him there are more of these shadows behind him now. He doesn't turn around to look.

"Is this a real place?" he asks, though he suspects he already knows the answer.

The skeleton surprises him with the opposite however. "Yep. Doesn't look it, I know. Stuff's mostly a matter of perspective." He taps his phalanges on the polished surface of the bar and then lightly curls his hands around a glass that wasn't there before. It doesn't look like he's actually touching it. "Uh, also on that note: I admit I kinda lured you here under false pretense. Sorry, kid. No actual grub here for us." And as he uncurls his hands, the glass briefly seems to be lifted up by a piece of void, and then it's gone.

"I mean, we could get our hands on a burger or something if we really tried," he continues. "But, y'know, that'd involve a whole lot of effort. And in my humble opinion, effort's never really worth the trouble."

Sans stares at the wall behind the bar, where a large shelf is filled with rows and rows of gleaming, identical bottles with empty labels. He shrugs in helpless agreement. "Never achieves anything anyways," he mumbles to his own hands.

It's silent for a bit, then Other-Sans shifts in his seat with a low chuckle. When Sans looks at him questioningly, he just hides both his hands in the pockets of his jacket and tilts his head to the side. "Eh, nothing. Just ‒ you got bitter a lot earlier than I did, buddy. Kinda sucks... but I get it."

Beyond the borders of the room they pretend to sit in, behind brick walls that Sans shouldn't be able to see through at all, dark gray figures flicker along the void, their whispers purposely hushed now. Other-Sans cocks his head and raises a brow-ridge and they disappear again.

Sans isn't sure what to ask next, how to prioritize the many questions, how to know which one will most effectively get him started on untangling this mess.

Luckily, Other-Sans seems to realize that and doesn't wait or him to start again. "You know about the multiverse?" It's not an entirely real question, but he still waits for Sans' affirming nod before he continues. "Well. You sorta ‒ glitched out of your universe and into the gooey in-between. That red stuff you practically jumped into? Yeah. It tends to make things weird."

"Did you jump into red magic too?"

"Heh." Other-Sans' snort is dry and humorless. "Nah. I mean, I did get a small dose of it. Just about enough to be unhealthy. Only reason I can even talk to you like this." He gestures vaguely between them and Sans assumes he means their relatively corporeal state.

"You'd just be one of the voices otherwise?" he asks, but he really is sure of the answer this time, so he keeps asking, "Why don't you like them? They've been nice."

With a slow, heavy sigh, Other-Sans rubs the top of his skull and stares off to the floor behind the bar, his eyes dull and tired.

"Most of 'em are... a bit more shattered than me. Bit less themselves. Ironically, here in the void, having some of the red stuff in you helps keeping it together for a while. There's only really two of us who can do that, and the other one's a bit ‒ uh. She can be overwhelming. Didn't think she'd be the best person to play magical void guide for you." He spins on his stool a little and faces Sans, grinning at him with his hands in his pockets and his feet easily dangling around. "Besides, the two of us basically already know each other, right? Thought that'd make things a bit less awkward."

"Or more," Sans argues. "You're different. You're just ‒ oh!" He grins and excitedly pats his hands on the bar. "You're just my bare bones!"

"You trying to get under my skin, kid? Too bad, I don't have the nerve for it."

Sans is giggling into his hands now, and Other-Sans watches him with that odd warmth in his eyes again. There is a sort of sad tone to it, too. It's in the way he hunches his shoulders a bit and lets the bright light of his pupils dim down only a little.

"Whelp," he starts up again. "You know we're not really the same guy, you and me. Just sorta ‒ each a different interpretation of the same idea, I guess. Monsters look a little less human where I'm from, that's why I'm such a bony fellow. Went through a whole bunch of different experiences, too."

Sans mirrors him when he starts swinging his legs back and forth and he decides that he likes this place. It feels very calm, even if he isn't really here, physically. Even if the shadows beyond the walls keep pressing around the borders of his consciousness, pretending not to listen.

"Why is everyone here?" he finally asks. "You and ‒ and them. The voices. They didn't fall into red stuff, right?"

"Nope." Other-Sans is now looking at the somehow person-shaped shadow closest to them, the one that's hovering right behind the bar and that seems to be holding a glass and a polishing cloth. "None of 'em wanna be here. But apparently this is where you end up when your universe gets erased. Or, I don't know. Magically bombed out of existence? Still not sure what went down exactly, to be honest."

When he turns and looks back at Sans, his eyesockets are black, empty pits and a harsh sting of empathy makes Sans' stomach painfully curl in on itself.

"Should probably ask your Gaster about that."

The room grows weirdly cold. The gray tones surrounding them become darker, blur into each other and the shadows around the corners are twitching now, curling and twisting in silent, powerless anger.

Sans wraps his arms around himself and shudders.

Other-Sans makes a sound like a sigh or a curse, it's too quiet to tell, and then he slides off his stool and, with still angrily blackened eyes, waves a hand to make the shadows crawl back.

"They have a right to be angry," Sans murmurs at his own knees, not daring to look anywhere else.

"Ok." Other-Sans voice is normal enough again that it slowly warms the place back up. "Not their right to make you listen to it, though." Rough fingerbones flick against Sans' shoulder to make him look up. "Hey. Sure, they're pretty justified. And most of 'em wanna help you. But having a thousand voices from a dead world scream their issues at you isn't exactly healthy, y'know? They should know better."

Sans only reluctantly climbs down from the chair again. This feels like they're leaving and he doesn't want to leave yet. The other Sans said Papyrus is safe while they're here. If he goes back, it will all become real again. "They want to help," he repeats, mostly to try and drag out the conversation a bit.

The skeleton shrugs. "Sorta. I mean. If you're just floating around in non-existence and are then suddenly tethered to another living consciousness in a real, living world ‒ I guess you kinda start rootin' for 'em."

Sans doesn't know how to feel about that. He doesn't really know how to feel about any of this, is not even entirely sure if he understands. But it also doesn't seem like Other-Sans is all too concerned about making him understand the details, and he's obviously the one who knows what's going on, so Sans is willing to trust his judgment on what kind of information is important or not.

When the bony hand is offered to him anew, he again grabs it without thinking about it twice. He's not sure he likes this Sans, exactly. Or any Sans, for that matter. But it's probably time to at least start trusting him over others.

"Ok," Other-Sans says after a deep breath. "You remember how I did that shortcut?"

Sans tilts his head to the side in thought and wiggles his fingers through the air in his search for words. "Pulling the void along underneath?"

"Yep, pretty much. See, it's like... a projector. Or something. You have all these different places, universes, whatever. They're like the slides. Bear with me ok, metaphors aren't really my thing."

Sans listens silently with a little half-grin.

"So, anyways. You wanna go somewhere else, all you have to do is switch out the slides. Cause it's really all the same place, right, all the timelines, all the universes, they're all being projected onto the same screen. You don't actually have to move around at all. You just pick the level you wanna operate on. Though, and this is the problem, it's a bit of a mess with all of these images from all of these different slides showing up on just one screen. Not always easy telling them all apart."

They pretend to be walking again, but the room is moving away only very slowly. Sans watches the shadows shift, watches as the walls seem to stretch to make the door appear further away. Other-Sans doesn't comment, so it's probably normal. Or he's doing it on purpose.

"So, what you gotta do is, you gotta stick to the slides right next to yours, the ones you know or at least the ones that are really similar to the one you know. Because those you can actually go to. Trying to jump over to a completely different ‒ uh, projector ‒ yeah ok, this is where the metaphor falls apart a little, but you get the idea. Even if you manage to get a glimpse of another timeline or another universe altogether, actually going there is pretty much impossible as you are. Stick to your own world. Just ‒ tug at the edges a bit to move it into place around you."

He stops his futile walking movements and faces Sans, looking down at him with a relaxed and expectant grin. "You got enough red stuff on you to try," he continues after a short silence in which Sans still tries to wrap his mind around what's apparently expected of him here. "And once you get how it works, you won't even need any of it. I dragged you where I wanted to go. Your turn to pick."

Sans absently rubs his fingertips against each other, the warm prickling feeling of a magic not his own shooting up his arm with every move. He knows where he should go, where he's needed right now. But he'll have to go back there anyways in a bit; for now there is no hurry and he is supposed to go where he wants to be, not where he should be. So that's actually the easiest decision in the world.

Warm code drips from between his fingers and rolls down his cheek from his left eye. Other-Sans explained it with slides, so Sans kind of expected to see images in his head, but it's actually just text, just lines upon lines of names for places and people and descriptions of possibilities. It doesn't feel like magic, it feels like peeling back a layer of reality and revealing the cold, emotionless, mechanical skeleton of rules underneath.

Some words are unreadable, drowning in shadows or splitting apart and twitching with a constant humming sound devoid of any melody. Sans ignores those, he thinks they might be broken. But when he finds the one he's looking for, he just needs to reach out in his mind, touch the little designation and pull it in towards him.

The bar, 'Grillby's,' is gone in a second, the wooden floor replaced by another kind of wooden floor, an even warmer one. The faint memory of a sweet smell tickles his nose, but it's only that: a memory. Sans looks around at the warm light and soft corners of New Home, and he has never felt so homesick.

Other-Sans stands back behind him, probably trying to give him some space. It's a little useless, because space and time isn't real here anyways. He's just staring at a faded projection of the actual place, floating slightly above reality and just peering in through a tiny window.

Sans has to swallow hard around the sudden dam in his throat.

A skeleton's hand shouldn't be warm, but as it lands softly on his shoulder in a cheap attempt at comfort, that just ends up being one of those things that Sans decides not to question.

"Yeah," Other-Sans says, as if he's continuing a conversation. "Sucks."

Sans wipes his dry eyes and it leaves trails of red all over his face, he can feel them burning his skin. Other-Sans' jacket makes obtrusively loud swooshing noises when the skeleton shifts his weight and moves to Sans' side. "So," he starts with a weary sigh, "you know you actually deserved to stay here, right."

Sans shrugs and it makes the warm hand drop away from his shoulder.

"Hm." Other-Sans swings his arms lightly and the rustling of his jacket is so destructive to Sans' current mood that he's convinced he's doing that on purpose. "Alright. I mean, this is pretty hypocritical of me, I suppose. But you deserve to be happy. You're just a kid. None of that shit was your fault."

Why did Sans make them go here? This is stupid. It just makes his throat clog up and his eyes grow hot. It all looks different anyways. More empty. Something isn't the same as it was before and it gives him a sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach.

Other-Sans is very slowly walking backwards out the door again, and for some reason, Sans feels himself getting pulled along. "Y'see, grown-ups," the other version of himself keeps explaining, "they're the ones who know better, the ones who have power and knowledge. It's their responsibility to use it for the right thing." They turn around while New Home blurs into the background behind them. There are leaves covering the path in front of the door, but they don't make a sound as Sans and Sans walk over them.

They end up around the corner, the door still standing open behind them, but they can barely see it from here. When Other-Sans bends down towards him just a bit, it's not at all the same as when Gaster was standing here with him, in the middle of the night. It's still the only thing Sans can think about and it makes breathing difficult. Good thing he doesn't actually need air here.

Other-Sans crouches down in front of him when he notices his struggles, his hands go back to his shoulders and Sans can't help but be relieved. He looks straight into the eyes that are his own, only so much more tired and so much more knowing. "Your Gaster?" the skeleton starts, the white lines of his round face hard and serious. "Is kind of a jerk."

Sans laughs. He shakes his head, the hands on his shoulders clamping down harder when he starts to tremble a bit.

"And if you're really being honest with yourself... you already knew that."

The chuckles falling from Sans' mouth are breathless, of course. For some bizarre reason, there are tears running down his cheeks.

Other-Sans pats his shoulder awkwardly, looking off to the side as he gets back on his feet with a strained groan. His leg bones make little cracking sounds as they shift against each other. It seems like he mumbles something to himself, and from the hoard of voices that are not supposed to talk to Sans right now, there is a distinct sense of a sudden pang of intense worry and regret.

Other-Sans' face twists sharply for a second to mirror the sentiment.

Then the grin is back where it belongs and his hand ruffles Sans' hair fleetingly. "Come on," he says. "Time to go back."

And Sans clamps both his hands around the bony wrist, leans back to keep him from moving away and shakes his head in panic. "No! No, not yet, he's not safe yet, I don't know how to get out yet ‒!"

"Hey now, calm down." The skeleton's voice is steady as always, with just a trace of worry. "You know how to get out now. And there's someone there to help you."

New Home is falling apart into black nothingness around them, but Other-Sans isn't trying to pull them somewhere else yet. When Sans is breathing more easily, they're right back where they started. Floating in the void, a sea of darkness all around, with the hint of whispering voices and watchful eyes.

White phalanges wrap around Sans' hands and turn them over between them. The red stops dripping off his fingertips and instead collects right there in his palm.

"It's better if I take that off your hands," he says with a wink, but there is still a very serious edge to his voice. "Trust me. You don't want that on your body when you get back."

With a quick swipe of his fingers, the red magic stretches like a thread into the empty air, then quickly curls away from Sans' hands and towards the skeleton. A sudden dizziness makes Sans sway in place, makes his vision blurry. The voices begin whispering again but dull down immediately, as if a wall was suddenly pulled up between them. The grip of bony fingers on his hands vanishes.

"Hey." He's losing the red, it's gone from his hands, rapidly dripping out of his eye as well, lifting off his skin and with every drop he loses it's harder to understand the other Sans in the void. "Do me a favor, ok. Let him help, but don't trust him."

It feels like falling for a second, then like flying, then the whole world tilts to the side and there is pain in his... everything.

"Just get Papyrus and run." The voice sounds less and less like a voice, becomes more and more nothing.

Sans opens his eyes and sees only code, only red jittery words rolling down all around him.

"Nothing else matters."

With every blink, more code disappears. Seeps back into white walls, makes room for air, builds back up to reality. A deafening silence clogs his ears, his mind. There are no voices anymore, there is no hot burn of red, searing magic on his face.

Sans is pressed into a corner of The Room, buried under books that fell out of the shelves. Desk and chair are pushed against the wall, toppled over and broken. His body feels sluggish and unreal as he pushes the books off of him, fights his way back to his feet while the very last streaks of otherworldly gray vanish before his eyes. He's left with only white walls, a brown wooden door ‒

‒ and a melting, twitching, pulsing mass of black and white flesh in the center of the tilted room.

Sans stumbles back with a panicked gasp. He watches wide-eyed as a tall, slim form slowly solidifies inside the black remnants of the void, twisting around itself and searching for a place, for a way to stick together. Thin tendrils stretch out towards the walls, try to become limbs and fail pitifully as they splatter to the floor in heavy black drops of viscous liquid. Shaking, pointy shoulders hunch up around a deathly white face, the long black chasms along its eyes just now absorbing the last of the red that has been dripping into The Room.

A noise like fingernails on a chalkboard rips through the air and Sans yelps, curls in on himself and presses his hands over his ears. And he still hears it, still knows what it is as it tries so hard to sound like a voice. Only as the two empty black holes inside the white face pin him in place with their dead stare, only as two skeletal hands emerge from the black mass and sign along with the screeching noise, do the words actually manage to echo through Sans' head.

THERE YOU ARE.

Sans is trembling, staring, gasping for breath.

Gaster grins an empty grin and almost splits his melting head in two.

LET'S FUCK SHIT UP.


	16. Brothers

**Well. Last chapter! I'm kinda drained right now...**  
 **I had a blast writing this. No idea when I'll continue the series but I DEFINITELY have ideas already. I still have to go back and edit the hell out of the earlier chapters, but other than that, this ride is over.**  
 **Thank you to every single person out there who sent reviews, faved this, made fanart, or just read it quietly and liked it. You people are awesome.**

* * *

 **Brothers**

Without red magic on his hands and in his eye, taking the shortcut feeds directly on Sans' magic. It's a short and sharp pain, he has hardly the time to flinch and then it's already over.

 _~blip_

He is flailing his arms for a second, fighting for his balance. Not only is it very different taking a shortcut here ‒ more physical than it was in the void ‒ but the floor he lands on is also slanted and he tumbles backwards until his back hits the wall.

"Sans?"

It's Pollard who notices him first, but he sounds a lot more confused than Sans expected. The way he says his name is insecure and questioning, almost as if he's not entirely sure it's the correct name at all.

"What?" Grynn says, it's so weird to hear her whisper. She shakes her head and rubs her temples.

Freeda's hands are dangling lifelessly at her side as she looks between them all, puzzlement clearly radiating from her.

Sans' mind is reeling, little concerns prodding at the back of it ‒ what happened to the lab, everything's broken and slanted, what's going on? ‒ but he ignores them, his eyes darting around the destruction in search for ‒

"SA!"

Papyrus' voice is loud and shrill, he's bouncing in his constraints on the metal chair and beaming at Sans with an impossibly wide, open mouthed and mostly toothless smile. "Sa, san, SAN!"

His broken but beyond enthusiastic attempts to say his name are all the motivation Sans needs. The magic in his soul boils up almost without his doing, bones breaking forth from in between the floortiles. None of the three creators have time to react before he slams his fist against the door to his left, sharp bones following the movement and ripping into the wood.

Whatever magic kept his bullets from damaging the door from the inside is not effective out here. The metal reinforcements break away, wood splinters into a million pieces. Sans jerks his hand downwards and his bones tear the door in two.

For a second, the low hum of the Core and the little tings of splinters spraying everywhere are the only things he can hear; everything else has gone still, quiet. Even Papyrus has stopped moving and screaming, staring silently at The Room.

Then, a white, disembodied hand grips the marred doorframe, too large and thin, fingers too sharp as they dig into the metal. Another mirrors it on the opposite side, its mass trembling and shaking as it fights to hold its form. Parts of it drop to the floor, dust or liquid or something in between as the palm crumbles and disappears.

And then another hand claws its way out of The Room, and another, and then three more. Fingernails scratching along the floor, twitching in the air with signs too fast to read, dragging the twisting, dripping mass of black behind it.

The form straightens up carefully, its segments falling into place, code flashing up along its lines and vanishing again. A black, empty grin stretches along the white face with a noise like breaking bones, the hands drifting around the figure in a wide circle.

Out of the corner of his eyes, Sans can see Pollard swaying on his feet.

Seven hands twitch through the air in a rapid rhythm, sign after sign falling from their fingers and forming words that echo through Sans' mind.

HEY KIDS

YOU WANNA LET ME TURN MY MACHINE BACK ON?

While Pollard is frozen in place, staring at Gaster's new form with sweat collecting on his forehead, Grynn and Freeda hastily push themselves into action. It's minimal, but the way they move slightly into the path between Gaster and his mysterious machine in the back is completely unambiguous.

Grynn's smile is strained and her eyes widened, shoulders drawn up and fingers twitching by her side. Freeda stands completely relaxed, still holding onto a few test tubes.

NO?

The black, jittering mass of Gaster's body trembles in place. Little tendrils are ghosting along the rim as if trying to flee, but with every passing second he gets a little better at keeping his form stable. He pulls himself up carefully, his many hands stretching out around him.

ALRIGHT

THEN I GUESS YOU'RE GONNA HAVE A BAD TIME

The words are lightning bolts, tearing right through the stillness of the moment. Sans throws himself to the side, barely ducking in time as with a piercing shriek, the seams of reality break apart. Red code bursts into the air right next to his ear, a swirling wave of heat and pain.

Glass crashes to the floor, then Freeda bolts forward and throws out a ring of wildly spinning triangles, rushing towards Gaster with dizzying speed.

The floor explodes into the air, wide cracks forming under the sizzling code, red symbols flashing up and changing direction. A loud sizzling noise erupts from where they crash into the bullets and disintegrate them in a matter of seconds. Freeda jumps, twists out of the way just in time. A corner of her labcoat catches on the red and becomes dust.

The floor under Sans' feet is shaking, a deafening booming sound resonating through his whole body with each new wave of glitching code breaking forth from Gaster's fingers.

Papyrus, he has to get to Papyrus.

Freeda's triangles are trying to skirt around Gaster's enormous attack waves, twirling through the whole room and Sans barely sees them coming in time. They ricochet off the wall to his right, he ducks and rushes forward with his hands touching the floor.

While Pollard scrambles for cover, hiding behind a metal table bolted to the floor, Grynn starts in the direction opposite to Freeda. They're trying to corner Gaster and attack him from both sides.

Sans' mind grabs her soul.

 _~ting!_

He brings his hand down and slams her to the ground. Bones break through the tiles beneath her, but she pushes herself off the floor and backwards, away from the sharpened tips. With a sweeping gesture she summons two graceful arcs of diamond bullets, twisting around each other in narrow patterns as they rush towards Sans.

Sans turns to the side, dodges the first line, catches himself before he stumbles into the second and twists back around.

"Stop, stop it," yells Pollard from behind his table, frantically waving his hands at Grynn. "He's got one HP for fuck's sake!"

"He's attacking us," Grynn screams back, her blue soul slowing her down and dragging her towards the floor. With bared, gritted teeth she repeats her attack, still trying to circle around him so she can flank Gaster.

The waves of red code are crackling to Sans' left, a mechanical screech bleeding from the void. Sans can see billows of black and strings of red twisting around parts of the lab, pulling it into a vortex of flickering glitches. Somewhere in the chaos, between the enormous red maelstroms of destruction, is Freeda; darting around in a brutal zig zag course and throwing out attack after attack, each faster and more complicated than the previous.

A row of diamonds zips towards Sans and he has to jump backwards, where the walls are shaking and the floor is breaking under the pressure of Gaster's hands pulling reality apart. He gets too close and feels red inside, panics and scrambles forward again.

Grynn's bullets rush at him from the front, red bleeds into him from behind, Gaster is on the left and a wall is to the right.

Sans grasps at the code in his own head, numbers rushing through his mind, he seizes the universe around his coordinates and pulls.

 _~blip!_

Thunk!

Grynn yells in shock as he crashes into her, they fall. Sans is faster than her, he knows what just happened and she didn't. She still fights for her bearings, he rolls off of her to the side and with his magic still clutching her soul, he twists gravity and pushes her to fall towards the wall on the left.

The wall that is completely buried in red, hit by all the flickering waves that Freeda dodged.

Changing Grynn's direction mid-fall leaves a grinding noise in his mind, skews the magic in his soul and makes it burn, but then she is pushed away from the wall to the back of the lab. Where it's safe.

Why did he do that?

Doesn't matter.

He's on his feet and running again, not risking another shortcut just yet. It's too different here, he doesn't know how to do it right here.

Papyrus is struggling around in his seat and yelling "SAN!" again, too excited, too unaware of what is happening. Somewhere behind them, Gaster's attacks catapult a metal table through the air and Sans lunges forward as it thumps on the floor behind him, the thundering impact vibrating through his muscles.

"Stop, wait," Pollard yells, stretching out an arm as Sans runs past his hiding spot. His fingers close around his elbow for not even a second, then Sans is ripping his arm out of his grasp already.

It's not at all the same as attacking Grynn. Looking at Pollard makes his blood boil, makes magic shoot through his veins in painful bursts, it's hot and burning, it's anger _anger ANGER!_

The air behind him suddenly feels heavy. Something almost like hot breath drifts over him, moves the hair over his eye, but the right one is useless anyway. A calm, growling hum is in his ears.

Pollard's face spells pure terror. He stares up over Sans' shoulder, trembling, losing all color.

Sans doesn't think, he just feels. He thrusts his palm out towards the monster and his magic follows along with triumphant excitement.

There is a short, high-pitched whine and then Sans flinches violently when a thundering blare rips his eardrum to shreds. A white hot stream of pure, concentrated magic blasts over his shoulder, he can feel electricity crackling through the air, pulling at every single hair on his body. Pollard's scream is nothing compared to the brutal sound.

Cowering and with his arms hiding his face, Pollard manages to bring a shield up just in time. The attack cannons into it, cracks splintering over the shiny surface, but the shield holds ‒ the stream of magic that makes the air around it scintillate bounces off to the side.

The screeching of the code segments grows garbled and angry. Sans looks up to see Gaster's makeshift body being shot right through the chest by Sans' stray attack, leaving a giant hole in the black, dripping goop.

The signed yelling of seven hands at once drills into Sans' head.

WHAT THE FUCK

ARE YOU FOR REAL RIGHT NOW

FUCKING IDIOT

LOOK AT THIS SHIT

I JUST GOT THIS BODY I'M NOT IN THE MOOD TO GET A NEW ONE ALREADY

YOU HAD ONE JOB SANS

I CAN'T WORK LIKE THIS

Pollard is still a cowering wreck at Sans' feet, shaking and breathing harshly behind his damaged shield. Freeda is jumping at the opportunity, throwing out a rain of bullets at the distracted Gaster. Grynn is fighting her way back to the front of the lab through the raising waves of red code. Sans should not be laughing right now.

Sans is laughing.

He is doubling over and clutching his stomach, laughs until it hurts, points one shaky finger at Gaster with the hole in his chest. "I blasted Gaster!" he wheezes in between laughs, gasping for breath and shaking with adrenaline.

FUCK YOU SANS

"What," Sans giggles. "Aren't you having a blast?"

This is crazy, he's shaking all over and the continued desire to laugh is really not appropriate right now. When he sees Freeda taking advantage of an opening in the sweeping attacks all around her, he still catches her soul ‒ _~ting_ ‒ and slams her to the ground.

Most of the hands blip out of existence around him and return back to Gaster's side, but two of them take the time to flip Sans off before they go.

That really isn't helping!

Gaster's body is already knitting itself back together and Sans can't see his stats of course, but it doesn't feel like he did any damage at all. Or rather, it seems that Gaster's glitched out stats completely ignored any damage done to them. Are Freeda's attacks, as vicious as they are, even any real danger to him?

Pollard has finally found his ability to move and he begins crawling away from Sans, staring at him with a level of fear in his eyes that is both confusing and exhilarating.

Sans gets the laughter under control again, but the grin on his face still feels a little crazy, pulling his lips back from his teeth almost painfully. Before Pollard can slip away and join the fight against Gaster, Sans pulls up a cage of cyan bones around him. Since the man's bullets have no attack value, he can't use them to destroy Sans' bullets and is trapped in place now.

Papyrus is staring at the now empty air above Sans' shoulder, more mesmerized than anything else. Looking at him still tied to the chair has Sans' mind harshly snapping back into place and he rushes towards him again. The machines surrounding the chair are beeping frantically, bustling with static any time a wave of Gaster's code rolls by close to them.

And that's too close to Papyrus for Sans' comfort, that's not a misfire that'd be half as funny as the Gaster Blaster was. Gaster is concentrating on Freeda, who is continuously evading his attacks that are reshaping the entire laboratory into a debris field of broken furniture, that are ripping the floor and ceiling apart to reveal the glinting tubes and cables of the Core ‒ and somehow, the only "injury" Freeda has suffered so far is a now slightly asymmetrical labcoat.

Grynn's attacks rush forward from the back, zeroing in on Sans again when he finally reaches Papyrus. But she's very far away and the density of her attacks suffers greatly over the distance. Sans doesn't have to evade streams and curls of diamonds anymore, but only singular bullets.

They go directly for his hands, trying to keep him from loosening Papyrus' restraints. Sans summons a thick bone into his left hand to block the bullets with. He doesn't have enough space for much else, Papyrus is right there in the middle of it after all, but with only one singular bone he can't do enough damage to dust the bullets.

They keep circling around him like aggressive flies, targeting his hands. The continued strain of having to maintain Pollard's cage doesn't help with his ability to concentrate enough to find an opening.

He rolls backwards away from the chair, clenching his teeth. The bullets follow him relentlessly, but at least they're a little further away from Papyrus now.

Grimly relieved, Sans drops the bone in his hand; that is not a way of fighting that he's good at. With a quick gesture he has a ring of bones floating through the air around him, zipping up and down to interrupt the path of Grynn's bullets coming at him. One after another the little diamonds scatter into dust.

As soon as hardly a handful of them are left, Sans dashes to the side, ducks under them and runs in a fast circle around Papyrus chair. Grynn sees him closing in and rushes back with an inaudible curse on her lips, but Sans grinds to a halt and slams both his hands on the floor.

A wave of bones crashes through the tiles, follows after Grynn with a roar. The few pieces of furniture that are still intact get shredded within seconds, glass shatters and smoldering lakes of chemicals splash onto the floor.

The bones reach so high that Sans can't see Grynn behind them anymore and he doesn't take the time to find out what happens to her. Coughing through the biting smell of volatile chemicals in the air, he takes a sharp turn back around, his bullets ripping Papyrus' restraints to shreds the second he lays his eyes on them.

Papyrus' arms are immediately stretching in his direction, his eyes are shining with happiness and he's moving towards Sans without paying any mind to where the chair ends.

 _~blip!_

Sans catches him under the arms just before he falls. "San San San!" Papyrus babbles with the biggest smile, his feet kicking the air and his fingers grabbling at Sans' face.

When Sans pulls him in to get a better grip, Papyrus' arms swiftly wrap around his neck, his legs closing around his torso and then he's clinging to him like a monkey, practically vibrating with happy excitement. Sans tugs the toddler's head under his chin and, for just one tiny second, clings back.

And then a part of the wall explodes next to him.

Debris rains down on them and he jumps out of the way with a yelp. Papyrus mimics the sound, still having way too much fun with all this.

Red light flashes inside the giant dustcloud now obscuring Sans' view. Freeda runs out of it a second later, skittering backwards along the floor and leaving tracks of smoke, a close-knit ring of bullets spinning in front of her, trying to keep the slashing tendrils of Gaster's red code at a distance. But no matter how many attacks she throws at it, all that gets dusted are her own bullets without leaving even a tiny dent in the red waves.

Sans scrambles out of the way, but Papyrus' extra weight is more difficult to balance than he expected. When Grynn's bullets return to cut off his escape path, the only way to dodge is for him to drop to the floor on his back and push himself backwards off the metal chair with his feet.

Sliding along the synthetic floor leaves burning marks on his elbows and pushing himself back to his feet with Papyrus in his arms takes far too long; Gaster's code towers over him, an enormous wave ominously tipping forward.

He tightens his grip so much that Papyrus mewls in discomfort. The very moment the wave breaks above Sans' head, he's back on his feet, dashing forward into the renewed stream of diamond attacks curling in front of him.

His legs scream with the effort of dodging around them in tight, fast circles, the breath is momentarily punched out of him when he loses track of his surroundings and crashes into the wall to his right. But behind him is the feeling of angry red, the hot streams of unreality picking the lab apart to the sound of garbled static and he immediately pushes himself off the wall again.

Glass shards dig into his naked feet as he keeps running uphill, the ground swaying under him or maybe that's just his bad eye and ear screwing with his sense of balance. Papyrus is crying now, he can see the red wave closing in on them over his shoulder. Shattering, clanking, booming sounds are coming closer, Sans runs up the steep slope until every breath bites harshly at his lungs. More than once he almost slips on the blood coating his feet.

His soul is stuttering in his chest, worn out from the amount of magic he's already used. He shortcuts forward a few steps and it _hurts_ , but there is death behind him and a life in his arms.

Finally, with wheezing breaths and trembling legs, he careens into the doorframe to the kitchen on his right, hitting his shoulder hard against the bent wood. He slips at last, falls straight forward into the room and has just enough time to bring his hands up under Papyrus' head, then they both hit the floor with a painful thud.

The surge of red roars past the door, parts of the frame sizzling quietly as they're taken apart and deleted. But the rest stays outside, hunting for Freeda and probably not even aware that Sans and Papyrus almost got caught in the crossfire.

Sans is gasping and shaking while the pain in his feet and shoulder catch up to him. His nose is bleeding from when he hit the floor with it, his chest is constricting painfully as he struggles to catch his breath. Magic pulses in his soul like adrenaline, an urge to fight, to get up, to _use it_. It's replenishing quickly now, he's pretty sure he let go of the cyan cage around Pollard at some point during all this and it's an immediate relief for his magic.

For just a second, he worries if the man made it out alright, if Freeda did. Grynn was probably too far away to get caught up in that attack.

Papyrus, his back on the floor, his arms and legs still wound tightly around Sans, lightly pats the back of Sans' head with his pudgy hands. "San? Ok? San ok?"

Loud smashing and shrill shrieking is still sounding from the lab, the fight isn't over. But they're safe here for now, that fight isn't about either of them really. He curls around Papyrus and lets himself fall to the side, taking his weight off of him.

"Yeah," he mumbles. "Sans is ok."

Still, they can't wait around here forever. Sans isn't sure why Gaster is willing to destroy the entire lab just to get to his weird machine, but something tells him he shouldn't stick around to find out. He's got Papyrus now, leaving the Core and running as far as he can is the only next step he should worry about. Other-Sans said so.

When the shaking of the ground increases again and dust starts trickling from the ceiling, Sans shakes his head with a loud huff, before pushing himself back on his stinging feet. With his magic he takes hold of the splinters still stuck between his toes and quickly pulls them out, almost without flinching.

Sans fishes a handful of cleaning rags from the rubble, wraps some of the stiff, synthetic cloth around his feet and uses the rest to hastily tie together a sort of backpack that he can use to carry Papyrus.

Papyrus blows happy spit bubbles into his neck, apparently comfortable with his new position. Sans blindly reaches for him and pats his head, then, very carefully, he sneaks back to the door and sticks his head outside.

A pointed formation of tiny triangles zips right past him and quickly jerks back a bit. So Freeda made it out. He tries following her bullets with his eyes, but they're so fast he loses them not even two seconds later.

Gaster's giant wave attack has reduced half of the lab to rubble and ashes. From the door to The Room all the way up to just beyond the entrance to the kitchen, nothing is as it was. The sheathing along the walls is peeled back to reveal damaged tubes, blue sparks flying forth as the only remaining lightsource in that area.

The whole ceiling is sizzling red, the bending and bubbling material slowly losing its form. The floor is a crater of sharp edged pieces of tiles sticking up into the air. Holes are dug deeply into the ground, in some places they reach so deep that the actually important parts of the Core have been laid bare far beneath them. Whatever small parts of the floor are still flat enough to walk on are swaying in place alarmingly, about to tip over and fall into the abyss below.

Sans can't see any of the burning, bubbling sea of lava, but the fact that it's suddenly stiflingly hot in here tells him without a doubt that there is far too small a barrier between them and its surface now.

Along the edge of the destruction, Gaster and Freeda are still hunting each other, Gaster's attacks now smaller but faster and Freeda's more concentrated on pushing him into a corner instead of flat out damaging him.

Behind them, past their brutal bullets and attacks, past a chasm of wild currents, deadly drops and sharp spikes, is the exit door.

With angry tears stinging in his eyes, Sans hits against the doorframe with his fist, biting his lip to keep the curses inside. They can't make it past all that without help, not with Gaster and Freeda continuing their insane battle without paying any mind to collateral damage. He would still risk it, but not with Papyrus on his back, throwing off his balance and making the consequences of failure so much more catastrophic.

Sucking in a sharp breath, he runs back out of the kitchen, bent forward to make himself smaller, less of a target. Where are Grynn and Pollard?

Just as the thought enters his mind, he reaches a point far enough to the raised side of the lab for him to see past the piles of broken furniture in the middle. The partition screen, its metal framing bolted to the floor, is seemingly melting on top and has holes ripped into it, but it's one of the very few things still standing. There is movement behind it ‒ just a short flash, but enough for him to realize that somebody has apparently had the same idea as him.

Get to the machine while Gaster is distracted.

Only that Grynn and Pollard will likely try to destroy it, meaning Gaster would lose, meaning he would be _angry_.

Meaning none of them would get out of here alive.

Papyrus' fingers dig into his shirt when he lunges forward again, running at full speed. His collar gets pulled back and cuts into his neck, but it's better than not having his arms free. With his magic mostly recovered, he risks a few blips along the universe again, only pulling himself forward a short distance at a time. It's easier to control this way.

He needs that battle to end, he needs Gaster to calm the fuck down and help him get out of here. And that will only happen once he's reached his goal, once the machine is activated.

Just as he steps through another tiny rip in space and time, before his wounded feet even touch the floor again, he throws his hand out to the side and an avalanche of bones rushes in from the left, hacking what's left of the partition screen to pieces. The metal frame clanks to the floor.

Grynn and Pollard spin around, eyes wide and posture defensive. When Grynn realizes it's Sans and not Gaster, she almost seems to relax for a second, right before ‒

 _~ting, ting!_

Both their souls turn blue and drag them backwards to the floor. Grynn already understands the pattern of this attack and she's pushing herself off the floor, the altered gravity actually enabling her to jump higher than she normally could; but Pollard is slower and he screams in pain when bones break through the floor below him, piercing his soul in rapid succession and sucking the HP out of it one tiny drop at a time.

Diamonds fly at Sans again, but their patterns are more wobbly than before, less controlled, and he remembers that other monsters don't replenish magic as quickly as he does. His bones vanish, Grynn's irregular attacks actually harder to predict and dodge than her usual, carefully crafted patterns. Papyrus' is bounced around on his back as Sans twists away from the bullets with choppy movements. The lack of happy squealing clearly shows that he's actually aware of the dangerous tension by now.

"Stop, STOP! Stop it," yells Pollard, scrambling out of the way of Sans' next wave of bones, practically on all fours as he fights to regain balance. "Can we PLEASE stop this nonsense, just, let's just TALK!" There is no room to navigate in this tiny corner of the lab and his back hits wall. He stretches both arms out toward Grynn and Sans respectively, who each have bullets floating around them and baring their teeth at each other, fingers twitching and magic bubbling in anticipation.

Sans doesn't take his eyes off of Grynn and she isn't backing down from their staring contest either ‒ but she also isn't attacking him for the moment.

"You. _Seriously_. Want to talk right now," she growls at Pollard.

Encouraged by the fact that she even acknowledged his request, Pollard shakily pushes himself off the wall, hands still raised between them in placation. "Wait, just wait for one second, okay?" When he's this scared, his voice is almost as squeaky and nasally again as it was before; before he got sick, before he came to Core. Before Sans became really scared of him.

It's almost nostalgic.

Pollard turns to him a little, very slowly, his ears twitching nervously where they're pressed flat against his bald head. "Okay, just ‒ what do you want?" he asks, one of his hands helplessly signing along with clumsy, flawed movements. "C-come on. Gaster doesn't care what happens to you, why would you help him?"

He isn't, but the implication of Pollard's words makes Sans too angry to point that out. His shoulders rise up and through clenched teeth he spits, "Why would I help _you_!"

Whether it's his tone or the fact that he's talking again at all, Pollard instinctively jerks back and brings up his shield right in front of him ‒ just in time for a thousand thin, sharpened bones to pelt against it, forcefully enough to actually push it back and crack it in multiple places.

Sans shouldn't be as angry as he is, he thinks when he lunges forward, his arms thrusting out and shattering the shield in two with the next attack. But the voices were, they hated Pollard so much and Sans may not hear them anymore, but he still feels their rage.

Pollard stumbles, desperately avoiding as many bones as he can, but Sans has his soul wrapped up in magic. SLAM, he hits the wall, CRASH, into the ceiling, THUNK, back on the floor. Dust sprays up on each impact.

A shield flickers up and is immediately ripped to pieces. Diamonds fly at him from the side and Sans dodges without even thinking. Teeth clatter to the floor with the next impact, horrified noises falling along beside them that are hardly a voice anymore. Sans thinks of a different voice, a small, scared, high-pitched whisper from the void that made Pollard _twitch_ ‒ and his eye burns hot with magic and rage.

He shouldn't have stopped paying attention to Grynn.

Because _hiss_ , go the vents.

Sans drops to the floor, Pollard follows him. Dust clouds tremble in the air above his head, following the rhythm of the shaking lab.

This isn't real, this isn't real, Sans knows it isn't real. He doubts the vents are even _working_ anymore.

But the void is in his mind.

His body is somewhere else, useless, motionless. Little hands patting his head that he can barely feel. The small, small voice saying his name as best it can, so worried, so far away. His right hand trembles with distant fury.

His head lies on its side, watching with glassy eyes how Pollard fights to get back up. Bent forward, shoulders tense, he kneels on the floor, hands pressed to his face. Thin trickles of dust flow down his arms from in between his fingers, his body gently sways from one side to the other. He makes sure not to touch his nose, it's crooked and looks weirdly pulpy.

Grynn's feet entering Sans' field of view are a blur. He can't see clearly among the gray, can't hear properly past the thick wall around his mind, can't really feel how his eyes grow hotter, how little pools of warm water collect in his eyes.

He's pushed to the side, switched off, discarded. Grynn helps Pollard back on his feet and Sans can't do anything to push them down again, to stop them, to make them pay.

Flickers of red light pierce through the gray, swift, tiny spots. Little sparks of feeling as a sheet is pulled to the side and there is glinting metal, heavy tubes, delicate glass. He sees the machine and barely cares anymore.

Except there's still a voice, a small voice, and it grows larger. Is this the void calling again? It doesn't feel like it. It has never said his name like this. Never sounded so scared.

Feet shuffle on the floor, coming closer, coming back, he can't tilt his head up to see but there's a shadow looming over him now. Bending down. Something reaches for him.

And a small, round, soft hand reaches back, palm outward and fingers splayed. And "No!" says the tiny voice, bubbly and angry. "Bad! No!"

And something long and cyan pops up in front. Thin, wobbly, blurry, but its magic burns through the void in Sans' eyes, the color clear and definite.

Cyan.

A cyan attack from Papyrus.

An attack he shouldn't have.

Unless they went through with the experiment while Sans was stuck in The Room.

Unless they _stuck a needle in his baby brother's eye_ and forced an attack on him that was _Sans_ ' responsibility, _his_ burden, _his_ bones ripping apart a human child's skull.

Sans' right hand jerks up and smashes flat onto the ground next to his face, the wetness in his eyes burns with scalding energy again.

The void shatters.

There's only red, and a scream, and a pain in his throat as he crashes forward right into Grynn. His elbow in her stomach, his teeth in her arm that was reaching for him, her angry yell as she tries to pull him off. The taste of skin and dust on his tongue as he bites down and pulls back, and finally her scream is not just anger and frustration, but all pain.

He spits and wet, white dust runs down his chin. She clutches her arm to her chest, staring and screaming at the part that's missing.

Pollard yells something and Sans doesn't listen, there is a high-pitched whine in his ears. Then it's behind him, a growl and a whine and then a BLAST of magic, white, hot and blaring and this time, Sans doesn't let go of the feeling. There is utter panic in front of him as Grynn and Pollard practically trip over each other in their attempt to avoid the burning stream of pain that's almost filling up the entire corner.

The rapid sound of two sets of HP ticking down is a sound of triumph now. He ignores the pressure on his magic, the heavy weight in his chest, and with a strained yell he jumps backwards, thrusts his hand out and pushes the _thing_ further into the corner.

He can barely make it out over the white blur of the enormous ray of magic. All he sees is that it's white like bone, it has spikes and teeth ‒ and it's at least three times as big as he is.

Papyrus has his hands dug deep into Sans' shoulders, holding onto him with hitching breath. The roar of the attack is deafening, a continuous shockwave pushes against Sans and he has to fight hard for his balance, leaning forward against the burning wind tearing at him. It feels as if his feet might slip off the floor any second, he's afraid to lift them for even a moment to adjust his stance.

A cracking and crumbling sound comes from the other end of the corner, barely audible, but as soon as Sans hears it and sees cracks forming on the wall under the pressure of the magic blast, he yells wordlessly with the effort of pulling his magic back again.

It's like fighting another will inside his mind, something there that wants to keep fighting, keep destroying. But Sans grits his teeth, pulls his hands back and yanks on the leash with all his might, an angry growl on his lips.

An answering growl thunders from the massive jaws. A glowing white pupil much like his own rolls back in its black, empty socket and glares at him.

Sans clenches his fist and swiftly moves it to the side. His magic follows straight behind and with a little whooshing sound, the monstrous, floating skull fizzles back out of existence.

Papyrus is pressing himself firmly against his back and Sans clearly feels how his whole body trembles. Apparently neither Grynn nor Pollard can keep themselves from doing the same, pushed back against the wall, slumped on the floor and pressing their hands over their own souls with heavy breaths. They stare at the spot where the skull just vanished, eyes impossibly wide and beads of cold sweat running down their foreheads.

That ‒ attack, if he can even call it that, might be a bit scary, Sans realizes.

He doesn't find it so bad, to be honest, but when he reaches around to gently stroke Papyrus' shoulder, his hands instantly clamp down around his own and he holds on with a small whimper.

It takes all of Sans' willpower to not drop everything else so he can hug and reassure him right then and there. But he made the mistake of taking his eyes off the opponent once, he won't do it again.

Grynn and Pollard are not even entirely back on their feet yet, just struggling along with their hands propped against the cracked wall for support, when he wraps his magic around their weakly pounding souls again. They yelp and scramble away, even Grynn with a definite grimace of fear on her face. Sans yanks them away from the wall, makes them fall past himself back into the lab, where everything is still shaking and code flashes like lighting through the air.

The very second the two scientists tumble to the floor, he throws a small row of bones chasing after them. It's not even a serious attack or one that's hard to dodge at all, but with their HP so low already, they dash away from it with a haste that borders on panic.

Right where the partition screen used to be, Sans erects a wall of cyan bones, cutting himself off from the rest of the lab. For now, at least. He can't hold that attack forever, after all.

Before Sans, squished into the corner and with a white sheet still partially hanging off of it, stands Gaster's machine.

It looks ‒ different. Not like the kind of machines he usually sees all around the lab. There are no monitors, no buttons or even power cords as far as he can see. No writing anywhere, no labels telling him what part does what. Nothing that tells him how to turn the damn thing on.

But Pollard managed to turn it off without instruction. Surely that means Sans can figure out to switch it back on. He coos a few calming sounds in Papyrus' direction and Papyrus answers by bubbling relieved sounds into his neck, then Sans steps forward until his nose almost touches the machine.

It's a collection of dull, black panels fit together into a sort of arc, stabilizing the intricate network of thin glass tubes in its middle. Some thicker black tubes connect the panels with the glass ‒ these are the same ones that are often used in the experiments on Sans, the kind that he not so long ago had an entire cluster of shoved into his soul.

The red feeling is here. Very soft, very small, but it's here. This is not the same as the angry, hot red burn of Gaster's waves of code, the ones that he pulls forth from somewhere between worlds and forms in ways that can only destroy. What is quietly ghosting over Sans' skin now is that same red feeling that made him hear the whispers, that made him strong enough to find a way out of the room ‒ that first made him feel for the very fabric of the world and pull it along underneath him, just gently nudging it in place.

In the middle of the machine, at the point all the tubes lead to and where they join up into one single cluster, there is a narrow container covered by black casing. At the edge, where small clasps are holding the casing in place, a tiny ray of red light breaks through the black, barely even visible unless he leans forward and squints.

Sans thinks he's seen the material of the casing before, on protective suits mostly or on other machines where specific parts have to be extra isolated from even trace amounts of ME in the air. So, apparently magic can't move through this stuff and seeing as the machine has no electricity running through it, it needs magic to function. Red magic.

It's not the time for hesitation, for overthinking things. Sans very carefully reaches into the machine, past the web of glass and metal tubes, and flicks the clasps on the casing to the side. It immediately slides open and reveals the thin glass cylinder underneath.

A red soul is floating inside. Slowly, calmly pulsing in place, its red light begins flowing through the tubes, filling the whole machine with a soft red.

Sans' fingertips are pressed against the container, right above the soul, and just like when he was first feeling the pulses of Papyrus' soul from inside the tank, there is a warmth. Something ‒ living.

He almost thinks he hears a voice.

His index finger gently taps against the glass.

"Knock knock?" he whispers.

Behind him in the lab, something explodes.

Sans almost stays here with the soul, but Papyrus is still clawing at his shirt, craning his neck so he can see above his shoulder and the red stuff is not good for him, they need to get out. His fingers slip off the warm glass and he turns, cyan bones dropping back into the floor so he can run outside.

He is greeted by pieces of furniture being flung through the air past him and within a second, his mind snaps back into fight mode. Ducking and reaching back to tug Papyrus' head down, he dashes forward and around the shattered tables, chairs and machine parts raining down on him from where Gaster is taking apart what little remains of the laboratory.

There is Freeda, pushing aside the debris that is aimed at her by having it clash against a row of her bullets in mid-air, dancing around the feelers of red code still grasping at her from all directions.

Sans can't stop to get a good enough look at her, but she seems slower than before. Gaster has collected some tiny holes in his mess of a body, a few small triangles even still stuck in his black flesh, but it doesn't actually appear to bother him all that much. His flat white face with the static black grin is hard to read, but his movements spell annoyance rather than anything resembling exhaustion.

Sans crosses the lab, quickly ducks into the kitchen and hardly spares more than a glance at Grynn and Pollard, who are holed up in a corner and trying hard to regain some HP ‒ but, unsurprisingly, healing isn't really their strong suit and the food has long been scattered around the lab and burned to ash. They flinch back when he enters, but Sans just takes one second to catch his breath, then he darts back outside.

Gaster's and Freeda's confrontation has destroyed such a large part of the laboratory that they keep moving up the slope towards the kitchen and the corner with the machine to avoid the crater behind them. Sans barely has to move down before he's within reach, then ‒

 _~ting!_

‒ he throws Freeda to the ground.

She's the one who trained him at the start, and he knows she should be fast enough, but when his wall of bones breaks out from the ground beneath her, she doesn't have it in her to dodge them all anymore. Her health ticks down so rapidly, she is left with barely half of her points when she manages to roll to the side and jump back on her feet.

Where red code wraps around her leg.

Sans jumps back in shock when she screams, just for a second, her right leg enveloped in red from the knee down. Then he sees her square her shoulders, stamp down hard with her other foot and lean back.

She pulls backwards, a swarm of bullets assaulting the tendril wrapped around her leg. Sans can't make himself look away when she breaks free with a breathless gasp ‒ and her leg is ripped clean off.

She drops back down, a strangled noise falling from her lips and a pool of dust quickly collecting underneath her. With shaking hands she clutches around the stump, but lets go immediately when Gaster's attacks rush at her anew. She throws out a broad ring of bullets in front of her, but they are shaking and losing their formation quickly. All she can do is pull herself backwards with the other arm, one palm raised in front of her to try and direct her bullets. She knows she lost, but her teeth are clenched in hard defiance.

Right before Gaster's code crashes down and swallows her whole, Sans pulls his hand back and Freeda's blue soul drags her backwards across the floor, a thick trail of dust flying after her. She is flung into the wall, hit by a thousand sharp bones, so tiny that each is hardly more than a needle prick.

Sweat runs down Sans' forehead, lowering his attack damage a challenge that he never had to attempt before. Just as he can feel her HP wear down and sees her shoulders slump, he clenches his fist and stops all his attacks.

She slides down the wall slowly, unconscious before she even hits the ground.

Hands with holes in them lazily circle around Sans, while the red billows of code slowly die down around them.

0.3 HP

NOT BAD, CONTROL-WISE

NOT NECESSARY EITHER

There is no real curiosity behind the signs, the words, the voice in Sans' head. So he just stands there for a moment, breathing, glancing around at the destruction and feeling a bit of the tension bleed out of his shoulders.

It seems like Gaster can't actually form something as detailed as legs or arms out of his black goo. The way he walks becomes an odd struggle of writhing, dripping tendrils trying as best they can to pretend at being legs for long enough to pull him forward, and every few seconds something glitches, something gets lost in scratching static and he jumps forward a few paces. Almost like Sans' shortcuts, but it doesn't seem like it's something he does on purpose.

Black eyes in a cracked skull are trained on the corner opposite the kitchen.

MACHINE IS ACTIVATED?

Again, not a question, because he doesn't even stop "walking" towards said machine to wait for an answer.

It's only now that something clicks in Sans' mind. The reason that Gaster even needed his help, the reason that Freeda kept throwing bullets at Gaster even though she immediately saw how ineffective they were. Both of them had just been stalling, keeping the strongest of their opponents busy so that their allies could get to the machine and either destroy or activate it. Gaster couldn't have gotten whatever he had planned done in piece with Freeda still there to get in his way, and Freeda couldn't have gotten to the machine and destroy it herself with Gaster getting in _her_ way.

They were probably both a little frustrated with how long it took their respective allies to catch on. That one, brutal wave coming after Sans, herding him further up the lab where he had a good vantage point on the machine suddenly makes a lot more sense.

Papyrus is shifting on his back, much less tense now and looking after Gaster curiously. He babbles questioning syllables at Sans while pulling on his hair.

The path is ‒ not clear, exactly, but at least there's no fighting anymore. Sans stares over the chasm of destruction between himself and the exit. It still wouldn't be easy to navigate with Papyrus' weight on his back, but with a few shortcuts and maybe by turning himself blue and floating across the worst parts, they can definitely make it.

He plans a path in his head, guessing at the stability of the few areas that still look as if he could stand on the floor without making it crumble beneath him. Beneath the busted metal plates, thick isolated tubes, cables and the ruined panels of the Core, he can hear lava bubbling and the sweat running down his forehead is not a sign of exhaustion from the fight anymore.

Though that is definitely catching up to him as well; the longer he stands here the more he feels the cuts on his feet sting again, feels every single little hurt flare back up now that his brain isn't preoccupied with just staying alive anymore. His nose stopped bleeding but it still hurts, there is a dull, pulsing pain in his shoulder that's slowly stretching out over his entire back. His magic is the only thing that doesn't seem completely worn out, which is weird considering the fact that he used an entirely new attack without really knowing how it works yet.

Papyrus pats his head and tangles his fingers in his hair again. At least this time he doesn't pull. "San ok!" he says, more of a statement than a question, and Sans bends his head back as far as he can to smile at him.

They should leave now.

Sans stands still, his smile dropping slowly. He looks past Papyrus at the red corner that's growing more red now.

Red magic from a red soul.

The odd feeling of seeing a friend again after a long time.

This isn't right.

His feet carry him back across the lab nearly without his doing. They have time now, the danger is over. They'll still be able to leave. But there must be a reason why Grynn, Pollard and Freeda are so against the machine being activated. A reason why Gaster is so set on it. How can Sans be sure that he did the right thing, helped the right person, when he doesn't even understand what it all means?

Papyrus' babbling grows quiet when they enter the corner. Gaster is facing the machine, intense red light blurring the contours of his body ‒ or is that just him not caring to uphold his form anymore?

His many hands are delicately moving parts of the machine around, connecting glass tubes and little vials with each other, leading the flow of red on a specific path. He doesn't turn when Sans enters.

The red here feels sad and angry.

RED MAGIC

Two hands start signing, without any prompt from Sans' side, without any need to actually say what he wants because ‒ he suspects ‒ Gaster already knew. Already expected him to come back here.

IT BRIDGES TIMELINES

PULLS THEM CLOSER

SO THINGS CAN JUMP BETWEEN THEM

"Why do you need to jump timelines?" Sans asks.

And silently he wonders, if sticking both his hands deep into a giant puddle of red only made him jump into the void, not another timeline ‒ then how much of the stuff did Gaster have to take to actually cross the void?

Because he did. Sans is pretty sure about that by now.

THAT WAS MORE OF A SIDE EFFECT REALLY

Three hands at once tap an index finger against the container in the middle of the machine, where the soul is floating lifelessly.

HUMAN SOULS

ARE LESS PREDICTABLE

Sans' eyes get stuck on the soul. They won't move, won't even blink, no matter how much they start burning after a short while.

It floats there just like Penny's did, after he tore it out of her body. Just like _she_ did in his mind, a memory, an echo, just like the feeling in his right hand, his right eye, his right leg. A last, dead remnant of a once living thing, hanging on just because.

And he knew this one.

Blurry tears are in his eyes as they snap back to Gaster, he refuses to let them fall. "You stole it," he says, surprised himself by how calm he sounds. Gaster doesn't even act as if he heard it, doesn't even deem it necessary to provide an answer. So it's true.

Of course it's true. Asgore would never just give this one to Gaster. Not for anything.

Now he understands the soul's anger, leaking constantly into the world around it and into the people near it, battling for dominance with the sadness following right behind. And now that he understands, it gets even more potent, it becomes a prickling feeling on his skin and a physical pain in his stomach. He stares at Gaster's back, at the way his many fingers precisely and coldly push _his friend's_ energy to where he needs it to be. Sans' fists are shaking, he takes a step forward.

And an explosion shakes the whole lab.

Sans has no time to cover his ears, to turn away, to see anything coming. Just a few steps next to them the wall blows up into pieces, fire lashes out and Sans is flying.

With a panicked bout of survival instinct, he wraps his own soul in blue magic within seconds and shifts gravity to pull him backwards, away, away from the fire and the walls to slam into while Papyrus is stuck on his back. He still falls when he hits the floor, any noises are dulled under the lingering ringing in his ears.

There may be screaming, and thundering crashes, screeching metal. Two more explosions, further away but still enough to make him stumble even more on his shaky climb to his feet.

The floor drops out from under him, just a few inches, and then it moves, swinging, turning, tilting forward and then back again. It's slow like a waking giant at first, but second for second the enormous mass of the Core picks up speed and the only reason Sans is still kind of on his feet is because he keeps shifting gravity along with it.

He sees dark spots on his right side, where the first explosion left an imprint on his retina, and beyond that the blurry shapes of Pollard being thrown around mercilessly, Grynn tumbling with Freeda on her back, who is awake and yelling something he can't hear. Burning heat bleeds into the lab, a bright orange light filling it up from below and to the left, where the last two explosions have now definitely ripped a hole into the Core.

Sans clenches his teeth, pours all his concentration into his blue magic and runs back to the corner he was flung from, pinning himself to the spinning ground as best he can.

Grynn is trying to help Pollard up, the two of them staggering along the wall. Their voices are almost inaudible over the thundering, clashing, screaming sounds of the Core falling to pieces, but there's a panic in it that Sans can pick up on even over all this.

Three hands materialize in front of him, Sans has hardly any time to wrap his mind around what's happening before two of them grab his arms and the third pushes against his back ‒ Papyrus back. It's helping him stay upright and move forward faster, pulling and pushing him towards the corner he was heading to anyways.

SANS

The signing hands that greet him when he makes it back are not filled with fear and panic like everyone else, but a determined sense of urgency.

HELP ME KEEP IT DOWN

Gaster's black body is more and more fizzling out into lines of code along the borders. He's floating in the middle of the cramped room and using all his remaining hands to hold down the machine's frame, push it to the floor to keep it from falling and breaking.

The wall on the right is gone, blue sparking flames are roaring inside the massive hole punched into the Core, eating away at panels and melting cables with alarming speed. At least here the outer wall of the Core hasn't been breached yet and Sans can't see all the way outside, but the way it's rapidly growing larger, one tiny explosion after another ripping it apart and speeding up the process, has Sans' hands shaking roughly as he throws his magic out over the machine.

"What will you do?" he yells over the noise building up everywhere around them, his voice almost unrecognizable, scratchy from fear as it is. The hands let go of him and with a torrent of blue, he presses himself, Papyrus and the machine to the floor, keeping them all in place while the ground spins beneath them.

Something shatters behind him, he can make out labored breathing and pained gasps. Nobody is helping Grynn and Pollard to stay on their feet and Sans has no idea how they managed to climb the steep, turning, spinning slope up to this corner, Grynn all the while carrying Freeda on her back and pulling Pollard along by his arm.

They make it inside with the last of their strength, slumping against the small portion of wall that's still standing in the back; just before the brutal noise of metal being ripped apart sounds through the lab, then the ground tilts up further with a jerk ‒ and suddenly, the wall is the ceiling and the floor is the wall.

Just for a second, the machine lifts up and starts to fall, but then Sans finds the right direction to move it in and slams it back against the now vertical floor. He himself is spinning in the air along with Gaster, too disoriented to do much but pull himself in ten directions at the same time to stay where he is. Papyrus is squealing on his back and he doesn't know if it's from fear or if he's actually having fun.

They end up hanging upside down in the middle of the room, his hands are stretched out towards the machine, continuously pouring everything he has into keeping it safe. Behind him, he can still hear the other three and he glances back to see where they fell against the wall that's now the floor, Pollard's shield above to keep them safe from falling debris.

"Gaster," he hears Freeda's pained, choked and furious voice. "Shut it off! NOW!"

Gaster's hands are back to working on the machine, shifting its components into place with little clicking sounds. A persistent hum starts up in the distance, or rather, it was always there and now grows loud enough to be audible even over the chaos surrounding them.

FUCKING IDIOTS, a few hands take the time to sign rudimentarily with just one or two fingers, not once interrupting their actual work.

YOU THINK THIS IS MY DOING?

WE'RE BEING RIPPED APART BY MAGIC EMISSIONS

I'M TRYING TO FUCKING SAVE US!

The hum becomes a droning noise. Its pitch slowly rises, grows shrill and loud in Sans' ears like the ringing from the explosion. The way the lab keeps shaking, moving, spinning around tells him unambiguously that more explosions are happing, the stifling heat a clear sign for how deeply the Core must be hanging into the lake of fire underneath already ‒ but the loud, monotonous tone suddenly cancels out every other sound outside their little corner.

 _~click_

The machine is switched on.

For a moment, all light is pulled away.

Sans floats in complete blackness, a feeling he knows now, but if he drops his magic he feels himself bumping into things, so he's still in the lab.

And the feeling of red returns, stifling, powerful, with a vengeance that makes him gasp for breath. A little red heart glows in the darkness, slowly growing brighter. Then glaring with bright, sharp light, dousing everything in red. The shrill hum starts up again and rises impossibly, higher and higher until it's not even a sound anymore, just something sharp in Sans' ears that's canceling out all the rest.

Things move in the air around him, things he can't see, only feel as they whip past him towards the soul where it's beating harshly in its glass cage, pushing out red and pulling in the rest. Like a strong, clawed hand around his soul Sans feels himself being pulled forward, to the light, to the red and his hands flail through the air in panic as he pushes against it with his blue.

DROP YOUR MAGIC

Gaster is closest to the red and he stands still, unmoved, his hands frantic silhouettes against the light.

IT'S PULLING IN THE EMISSIONS

DON'T USE MAGIC AND YOU'LL BE SAFE

That's what it is, Sans' hectic mind realizes as he lets go of his own soul and drops to the oddly still floor. The things that are speeding through the air around him, the little pieces of magic that accumulated into a horrible storm to break the Core apart. Somehow he feels it as they zip past him, feels with certainty that it's not just the ME from inside the Core; the machine is pulling it in from everywhere, sucking up the ME from the whole Underground.

Sans stands up on the floor that used to be the wall, a roaring wind all around still pushing him forward, though he can brace against it now and stay where he is. A shield shatters to his left, where the three scientists are cowering against the same wall. Freeda is the only one standing upright, balancing on one leg with a hand braced against the wall, wearing an expression far more intense than Sans would have ever thought her capable of.

But the red is growing, shining brighter and whining shriller, a dizzying vibration in the air that fills up his bones and something about the feeling, the small sounds breaking out in his head again, doesn't feel right at all.

"Where is it going!" he yells over the noise at Gaster's back. "The ME, where are you sending it?"

Because the voices bleeding into their world, whispering in Sans' mind, aren't the same as before, these are new voices, scared ones, panicked ones. He doubles over and presses his hands to his temples.

There are screams, children crying in his head, a thousand voices begging for help just before a sudden surge of even brighter light pierces Sans' eyes, and half of them are instantly silenced. Red magic is spilling into the lab in crushing waves, Sans can feel it fill up his bones like before, more and more with every passing second, and with each drop comes a deep, terrified understanding of what's happening. What already happened once, just on a smaller scale.

Because the void should have been empty, not filled with dead people.

Because _this is where you end up when your universe gets erased_ , Other-Sans said.

And _should probably ask your Gaster about that_ , he said.

Because what the machine is doing right now, the immense task of pulling in all this world's ME and pushing it into another universe ‒ that's not something Gaster could have made up on the spot without a lot of trial and error first.

He's done something like this before.

Sans feels how his body starts moving, pushing himself off the wall and towards Gaster without even knowing what he wants to do. But there are screams in his head, the pain and death of another world is burning in his skull and he can't listen to it, he can't. "You're killing them!" he yells, voice breaking in the rushing, magic infused air. "Turn it off!"

He swats at the hands circling around Gaster, tries with all his concentration to push past the dizziness in his head that makes the world feel like it still spins all around him. The cracks on Gaster's face are bleeding red when he turns towards him, expression empty.

I'M SAVING US

I'M SAVING YOU

"No ‒ not when ‒ not if people have to die." Sans' voice is barely a whisper anymore. He can hardly see anything other than the bright light in front of him, Gaster's silhouette reduced to a thin, blurry shadow in the corner of his eye. His feet keep carrying Sans forward, every step pulls hard on his bones and muscles, he doesn't even know what he plans to do. Gaster's hands grab him by the arms and hold him in place with ease.

I'M SAVING YOUR BROTHER

Sans sobs. Once.

Papyrus hasn't made a single sound, he can't feel his hands gripping at his hair or his shirt anymore. Can't turn around to see if he's alright. He can feel him breathing against his back.

But Gaster is a mass of void and code and magic, Freeda's eyes a dripping with red, the skin around Grynn's smile is stretching and tearing, Pollard is cowering in the corner, impaled by red light and his hands melting in front of his eyes. Sans can feel Papyrus breathing, but he can't see what the red is doing to him. Doesn't want to see.

A hint of orange glimmers in the black holes that are Gaster's eyes. His face is right in front of Sans, staring intently. In Sans' head, a child is screaming for their parents.

WE'RE SAVING OUR UNIVERSE

Red keeps trying to push into Sans, he can feel it right there at the edges of his soul, it's too much, way too much. But Gaster's had even more, somehow, he's stronger and Sans can't stop him. Not when he's this weak, not when his soul is too full with his own magic to make space for more red. Gaster had to die to make that happen.

The tears on Sans' face evaporate. His hair clings to his face. His naked feet are slipping away, drops of sweat fly away when he shakes his head, hover in the air and turn into steam.

There is a small, hard spot underneath his collarbone. It seems an eternity ago that they put that in there, a little machine, a tiny thing that was supposed to keep him safe, a magic essence container to suck the magic from his soul when it gets too much. Only if he's having an overload. Only for emergencies.

He faintly remembers being held in Gaster's arms and spinning through the laboratory on a chair. Remembers lying on a table shortly afterwards, scalpels cutting into his soul, screaming without hearing it, but trusting Gaster, trusting him to bring him back safely.

As he reaches into his pocket, his fingers brushing the button on the small remote he always carries with him, he makes sure to remember the pain above all else. The pain of broken bones, of scratching hands on his scalp, of needles everywhere. The pain of holding _her_ in his hands, watching as she dies, the pain of shattering Penny's skull into pieces.

The pain of New Home.

The Room.

The pain of being nothing.

He looks up into Gaster's eyes, the eyes that would watch unerringly as a million souls are burned to ash somewhere else. To save this universe.

Sans' fingers sharply close around the remote.

 _This universe_ , he thinks. _Isn't all that great._

He presses the button.

* * *

It's like fingers reaching straight into his chest.

The world flashes white. His mouth tastes like metal. Any feeling is blocked, pushed away, deemed unimportant in relation to that of his own blue magic being sucked out of his soul. For a just a moment, he is empty.

For just a moment, he knows he's dying.

And then all is red. It breaks into him, burns past his skin, clogs his throat and pierces his eyes, the merciless red rage filling up the empty space in his soul that was left behind.

The little machine in his chest is screeching, burning with the effort of sucking magic out of his soul, it can't keep up, the red is stronger. Blue liquid explodes from his chest when the small mechanism under his collarbone breaks under the strain.

Shards of metal dig into his flesh, blue magic drips from the hole in his skin, but Sans pays no attention to it. The little pager in his hand is creaking, his fingers clamping around it with a foreign strength powerful enough to make the pager dent and break until his fingers are only grasping scrap metal. That's alright, though. It's done its part, his soul is filling up to the brim with red.

There is still screaming.

Gray and white hands stretch out towards him from the light, the center of the machine. Faces, blurred at the edges, melting as they appear and then fade into nothing, the screams dying on their lips just to be replaced by others a second later. A whole universe is dying somewhere, Sans can feel white souls pressing against his own, large and small, good and bad ones. And one after another, they shatter.

Sans lifts his hands, it doesn't even feel like his own body anymore. Something sticky clings to his fingers; melting skin, he thinks weirdly detached when he glances down. His arms are set alight from the inside, glaringly red bones shining through his flesh, a web of veins curling around them, pumping magic and not blood. There's shouting from both this world and another, panic, fear, anger. White, bony hands lunge for him to hold him back and Sans doesn't even feel it.

There is a goal, and the red in his veins forbids him to think of anything else. He doesn't know whether he moves, or if it's a shortcut, or if he pushes Gaster out of the way ‒ he just sees the machine, suddenly right in front of him, his sticky hands pressing against the vial in the middle. The light is burning his eyes, but there's no feeling in his face anymore; whatever that hot, thick liquid falling from his eyelids and running down his cheeks is, it doesn't bother him at all.

Looking at the red soul in its glass cage ‒ it's almost like holding _her_ soul close again. Like watching her slip right through his fingers, crying for her son and dreaming of blue flowers. He's too far away now to hear the red soul's dreams, to feel its regrets, to hold it in his hands.

But he's close enough to know they share a goal. And he has no clue how the machine works, no idea what to do with the little tubes and vials, he just knows it's a bridge to a different place. They just need to break it off somewhere in the middle.

And maybe there is someone crying on his back as he falls to his knees, his hands dragging along the glass and leaving pieces of melting flesh behind. Maybe there is a scratchy, angry yelling in his ears from skeletal hands signing frantically next to his face as he thinks of the ME rushing past him, thinks of reaching out to it with his mind and pulling it with him.

With soft little clicks the glass tubes change their place. The red soul knows where to go, and Sans knows how to shortcut. He pulls everything in as close as he can, all of the storm that's swirling around them ‒ and together, they change its path.

 _~blip._

* * *

 _the funny thing is_

 _do you honestly think you don't deserve this_

 _this is how it's supposed to be_

 _do you honestly think you don't deserve this_

 _you are here of your own free will_  
 _except I'm not_

 _eeny, meeny, miny, moe_

 _do you honestly think you don't deserve this_

 _no one cares if you let go_

 _seems very_  
 _I bet it's really boring in here on your own_

 _knock knock_

 _seems very_  
 _do you honestly think you don't deserve this_

 _who's there_  
 _you don't exist_

 _promise me something_

 _everything functions perfectly_  
 _without you_

 _seems very_

 _the thought_  
 _the thought_  
 _the thought_

 _terrifies me_

 _do you honestly think you don't deserve this_

 _please forget about me_

 _seems very_  
 _very_  
 _interesting_

 _please forget about me_

 _please forget about me_

 _please forget about me_

"San."

 _please forget about me_

"San ok?"

 _please forget about me._

"Ok? San ok? Ok?"

 _please forget..._

please

forget

about

"SAN NO SLEEP!"

me?

Me.

Sans opens his eyes.

There are hands on his face. Small ones. Patting his cheeks impatiently.

Papyrus' forehead is creased in disapproval. And fear.

They stare at each other.

Papyrus slaps his cheek one more time. "No sleep now." His lower lip wobbles.

It's still weird to stand up, to move in general, when there is only blackness and no directions. No up and down. Nothing. But Papyrus is there, with him, and Sans reaches for him.

A skeletal hand on Papyrus' shoulder pulls him back.

"Whoa there." Other-Sans sounds calm and nice. He's smiling the sad smile. "Sorry pal, but no cuddles for you two right now. You're, uh, still kinda red there. Might be a bit much for your bro."

Sans looks at his hands. It's hard to see clearly, he realizes now. It seems like there is some thick, milky film covering his eyes and on the right, where he already can't see all that well, he can barely make out anything at all anymore. But the red glow from inside his bones is still visible, lighting up his hands and arms ‒ and likely every part of his body that he can't see right now as well.

When he tries to move his fingers, some of them seem to stick together.

When he reaches up to touch his face, it doesn't feel the way he remembers it. Like things are just kind of in the wrong place. He stops touching it when it feels as if his fingertips scrape over blank bone right under his eye.

The cold fear in Papyrus' eyes seems a lot more reasonable now.

Sans tries to smile and Papyrus almost starts crying. "I'm okay," he assures him quickly, but his voice is hollow and not his own, like it's coming from somewhere else, so he stops.

"Nah," Other-Sans says. "You're really not." The hand that's holding Papyrus' shoulder has a soft red shine to it, Sans thinks as he squints at it.

HE DOES NEED A BIT OF IT TO BE SAFE HERE

Sans jerks back at the sudden appearance of Gaster's hands in front of him, of Gaster's voice in his head. He looks around, finding mostly darkness. And three odd, twisted, gray shapes in the distance, twitching and blurring before his weak eyes.

OR HE'D END UP LIKE THEM

The very moment Gaster "speaks," the void rumbles with a fury that makes Sans and Papyrus cower and raise their hands over their heads. Other-Sans' grin is cruel as he stands up, eyes focused on a certain empty spot in the void and his red hand not leaving Papyrus' shoulder for even a second.

"Yeah, pal," he says, "I'm gonna have to ask you to stay out of this. No one here's really in the mood for your bullshit right now." His posture and voice betray nothing, but Sans can feel the seething anger from his skeletal doppelgänger and even though it makes his insides clench up painfully, he also wonders why it isn't much, much stronger.

Gaster seems to think the same.

YOU'RE CALM

CONSIDERING I'M THE ONE WHO DESTROYED YOUR UNIVERSE

Sans almost expects the void to crack and fall apart under the pressure of a million dead voices screaming in powerless rage.

Other-Sans shrugs. "Well, yeah, that was a dick move, not gonna lie. Nothing I can do about it now." They way he gently rocks back and forth on his heels still tells Sans without a doubt that he would rip Gaster apart right now, if there was anything left to destroy.

"Gotta wonder if you thought this through, though," he continues, his voice growing colder with every word and his wide smile more feral. "How's shoving your world's ME into other universes gonna end the crisis, hm? New ME will just keep building up. How many worlds were you planning on destroying just to keep yours alive? What makes you think yours is somehow worth more than all the others out there?"

Signing hands cannot laugh, but a soft vibration travels through the nothing that makes Sans certain that Gaster just did.

YOU TALK A LOT FOR SOMEONE WHO ISN'T INTERESTED IN MY BULLSHIT

"Heh." Other-Sans turns away from the void. When he looks down at Papyrus, who stares at him with round, curious eyes, his smile immediately softens. "Whatever."

Sans' head starts spinning slowly, his vision whiting out even more. It gets harder to concentrate on anything, but with his veins still pulsing red there is one thought that still seems more important than anything. "Did we save it?" he asks. It comes out more like a slur, his body tilting to the side. Something liquid drops from his face and runs down his neck. "The other universe?"

Papyrus is reaching both hands out towards him with a small whining sound, but Other-Sans just kneels down beside him and pats his back. With the other hand, he lightly grabs Sans' shoulder and helps him to stay upright. "Most of it," he says. "I mean, a big chunk of it was dead already when you started. But you still saved a lot of people."

He looks up into the blackness, his white pupils shining just a little bit brighter. Even if Sans can't see, he follows his gaze. The now calm and soft feeling of ME in the air ghosts over the remains of his skin. It's not a storm anymore, now that it has nothing to attack, now that nothing is trying to pull it anywhere it doesn't want to go. Now it's just a gentle cloud of magic hanging over them. And slowly, piece by piece, Sans feels it disappear into nothing.

"Saved your own universe, too," Other-Sans continues. "For now. Like I said, it's gonna build up again, so you'll guys have to find another, more permanent solution."

Something like a smile pulls at Sans' face and judging from the way Papyrus flinches and looks away, it's probably good he can't feel anything at all. He stares down at his red glowing hands, all but one finger clumped together in a melting, fleshy mass much like Gaster's body. Only it's not made of pieces of the void, it's his own body, his own hands that are falling apart before his eyes. He's glad he can't see that well right now.

"I don't think I can go back," he says.

Weird, but his voice is a little clearer now.

He blinks and it washes away a little bit of the film on his eyes.

At his shoulder, where Other-Sans' hand is still touching him, the red is growing strangely dimmer. The familiar feeling of blue seeps into him instead. With a start, his soul pulses harshly, once. Twice. Then it keeps pulsing and he hadn't even realized until now that it had stopped.

He lifts his head, it makes him less dizzy, and Other-Sans' face is carefully turned away from Papyrus as his eyes grow red. Both his hands are on Sans' shoulders now, with every second Sans regains the feeling in his limbs, his soul, sees his flesh slowly knit back together.

Other-Sans is melting.

Sans lunges forward, palms laid flat against a soft blue jacket and tries to push him away. "Stop!"

The skeleton is not moving under his weak shove, just continues smiling at him as Sans loses the red, feels it sucked out of his bones and into the other one's.

"S'alright kid." His voice is glitching, hissing static and his smile is dripping down his jacket over Sans' hands. "I was a goner already."

He stands up on melting legs, black void jumping in to cut out whole pieces of him. Like he doesn't want them to watch. "Can't help ya with the shortcut back this time. But you know how it goes."

Sans can't move, can't help but stare, even as Papyrus finally careens into him and wraps his small arms around him, burying his face in his neck. Other-Sans looks like he's waving at them, for a second. Then, with one loud snap of glitching code, he is swallowed by black.

From somewhere else inside the void, a surge of overwhelming grief rises up and crashes down. It makes Sans gasp for breath.

When he puts his arms around Papyrus, holding him almost too tightly, he looks down at his hands and sees singular fingers again. No red bones, no red veins are shining through his skin. He's whole again.

In both his own and Papyrus' soul, he only feels one tiny splinter of red, surrounded by blue.

SANS

He still can't see Gaster, so it wasn't just his eyes. But the signs are burrowing directly into his head, along with the voice.

TAKE US BACK

Sans stands up, arms hooked under Papyrus' legs. The void turns around him. He pulls at it, just a little, just how Other-Sans showed him. Moves it into place around him until the three gray spots in the distance are right in front of him.

LEAVE THEM

Three glitches in the system.

Three gray shadows that Sans pulled with him into nothing. Now he watches as Freeda's leg glitches in and out of existence, her face made of stone, empty. Watches Grynn curl in on herself, a growing spiral of self-absorption, a sharp and meaningless grin and nothing else.

THEY DIDN'T HAVE ENOUGH RED MAGIC IN THEM

He watches Pollard, a jittering, trembling mess, clutching his head, a black hole where his face used to be. The edges frayed and dripping with dust.

The void moves again as Sans turns away.

THE THREE OF US ARE THE ONLY ONES WHO CAN STILL LEAVE

And that's the reason Gaster just jumped back and forth between universes. Why he didn't even think of the possibility of letting the ME float away into the void instead.

Because he doesn't understand the void.

JUST TAKE US BACK THE SAME WAY WE CAME

He can't leave the void.

I KNOW YOU CAN

Nobody showed him how to shortcut.

SANS

Sans plucks the code with his fingers, sees it unfold before his eyes, a rushing stream of information that Gaster can't see. The nothing around him doesn't bother him.

He got used to it in The Room.

Gaster never did.

SANS!

And Sans pulls at the void. Mind wrapped firmly around his and Papyrus' soul, he pulls them both back into reality.

Without Gaster.

* * *

With a brutal shove, pain floods back into him.

He gasps, hits the floor with his knees, takes a strained breath around the pain in his chest. Papyrus clings to him with small, panicked sounds.

The Core is still red, still broken. Sans pushes himself back to his feet. The high-pitched sound of the machine is rising, growing louder and louder, the red light is flooding all his senses and he grits his teeth as he rushes forward. He has to end this, before he's right back where he started.

Three sharp-edged bones is all he can manage, but they fly from his palm and straight into the machine, shattering glass as they go. The noise stutters, the light flashes. Sans sees the machine begin to crumble.

He switches to holding Papyrus up with only one arm, lunges at the machine and wraps his hand around the vial in the middle. With a breathless yell, he rips it out and jumps back, turning to cover Papyrus with his body.

The shockwave hits him seconds later, makes him stumble forward into the wall, a rain of glass falls down around him.

For just one moment, he slumps in relief.

Then Papyrus is slapping his back with his palms, legs kicking the air as he bounces in his arms and babbles "Runrunrunrun!" in his ear.

Sans starts running, the very same moment that the Core begins moving again. The whole structure is infused with a grid of red magic; Sans yelps in shock as the tiles under his feet glitch away, then return a second later, then fizzle into the air as tiny strings of code. He trips, almost falls, keeps running forward and stares with wide eyes at the red magic distorting time all around him.

The holes in the ground are filled back up within milliseconds, only to break apart even more seconds later. Explosions are playing in reverse next to him, he gets pulled towards it and then pushed away again. A broken metal table right in his path lifts up from the ground, fits itself back together and flies up high in the air, higher and higher, then stops, hovers for a while ‒ and comes crashing down again.

Sans shortcuts underneath it, steps on a floortile just as it is lifted up into the air as well. He tries to jump but doesn't have to, an explosion to his left is pulling him right off it, he shortcuts away again before he can get too close. A stream of lava shoots through the floor right in front of him, he yells and covers his eyes.

With his soul pounding loudly in his chest, Sans rushes down the lab in a frantic zig zag course, time warping and changing all around him, speeding some things up and slowing others to a crawl.

It's actually working in his favor when he has to cross the enormous chasm in front of the exit. He forces himself not to think about the risk, about the fact that he doesn't know for how long any of it will hold; the second he sees time flowing in reverse near him, building the floor back up into a stable path, he rushes forward, jumps across the tiles and hopes against hope that he will find the next stable part before everything underneath him breaks away again.

Papyrus pressed against his chest with one arm, the glass vial with the red soul clutched in the other hand, he finally jumps across the last gap. Despite the exhaustion eating away at his magic, he slams one last attack against the exit door, breaking it open with one swift blow. He dashes right past the passenger lift that he and Gaster came here in so long ago, running for the freight elevator instead.

Only small lines of red are still crawling over the walls along this corridor, but he can still hear the chaos behind him and he can't possibly know what the outcome of all this will be. Will time go all the way back to when the Core was whole? Or will it just keep going crazy and finally break the entire thing, taking the whole Underground with it?

Sans grinds to a halt in front of the decontamination chamber and rips a protective suit out of the locker next to it. There isn't one small enough for Papyrus, of course there isn't, so he just grabs one of the bigger ones that they will both fit into. He's sure that's not the point of this kind of suit at all, it hangs off his frame loosely and he can barely lift his feet inside the massive metal boots. But some protection against the radiation is surely better none, he thinks, as he fits a breathing mask around Papyrus' face and connects the tube to his own helmet from the inside.

The vial was sitting on the floor between his feet during this and as he bends down now to pick it up, the weight of the metal shoulder pads makes standing back up again an unexpected fight. By the time he's on his feet and jamming his elbow into the button to open the door, his muscles are shaking uncontrollably and he is dripping with sweat. Papyrus struggles and cries, pressed against his chest and completely covered by the stuffy suit, but Sans doesn't have the energy to try and calm him down, so he just grips him harder so he doesn't slip out of his arms.

He remembers his plan to flee the lab via freight elevator, all this time ago. Just like he predicted back then, there is a simple panel inside, a monitor with a few simple commands, and all he has to do is press two buttons. The elevator lurches forward and Sans promptly falls on his back, the steel plates inside the suit effectively keeping him down.

Not that he even tries to get back up.

Papyrus is whimpering quietly against his chest, hands fisting his sweat soaked shirt underneath the suit. Sans just breathes.

Even the freight elevator is made of thick, extra heavy glass. He can watch the panels of the Core shifting and rearranging themselves to make space for them. Sans stares and feels himself lulled into a long-awaited, blissful state of emptiness. Blue, electric lights glint and flash above him and for a moment, all the tension bleeds out of Sans at once, leaving him weak and so, so tired.

For the moment, nothing matters anymore. He did all he could.

It's silent. Only two puffing, heavy sets of breathing can be heard, but no sound from outside reaches them in their little glass cage. They slide along their rail, panels shifting and light blinking, until they pass the walls of the Core and orange light floods the elevator from below.

Sans remembers it being impressive, back then, how enormous the Core was and how incredible and scary it seemed. Now, as they slowly leave it behind, he watches it swing from side to side, held by only two struts, parts of it falling and splashing into the lava below. It's dented on one side, crumbling on another, and only step by step does a barely visible red light fit the parts back into place.

On one hand, it's a little bit like watching a star implode, Sans thinks.

But on another, he knows now that the Core is small on the inside. It's no star, no planet. It's just a mechanism.

By the time the elevator comes to a halt, all the support struts are back in place. The Core is seemingly hovering in the air again, the electromagical field surrounding it is back to humming its dull tune, creating the illusion of the whole thing sluggishly pulsating.

Sans peels the suit off of him, arms trembling as he carries Papyrus and the vial through the empty control room.

He doesn't cast a single glance back.

* * *

The hallways are empty.

Everyone must have run when they realized the Core was beyond saving. Where they ran to, Sans can't imagine, because if the Core had exploded, everything would have been gone anyways.

He doesn't understand at all how he managed to get back to his feet. All remaining strength has left his limbs, all will to keep going is so far away he can't even remember what it feels like. His feet are bleeding again as he drags them along the gray corridors. Cuts from when the machine exploded are all along his arms, he didn't notice those before. His soul feels shriveled and dry, even just the thought of a single shortcut makes him feel like melting again.

The only reason he's even walking, he thinks, bent forward with Papyrus' weight on his back again, his little feet happily kicking the air as he twists and turn to take in every boring new detail, is because he has no idea what else to do. The thought of just sitting down, slumping against some wall and staying there, is so tempting that if he gives in, he knows exactly he might never stand up again.

So he walks.

His steps are slow and small. He doesn't know where he is going. When he stops for a few minutes to stare at a floor plan at the wall, it turns into a monumental task just to start walking again. But Papyrus is pulling at his hair, kicking lightly at his sides and making annoyed little sounds, and it all helps him to go back to moving. Now with a nonsensical, vague idea of where he's going, at least.

The air is warm when he gets there. Somehow, it smells sweet. Colorless leaves rustle under his feet and lightly fly up into the air. Only now does he wonder where they even come from.

Gray walls greet him, silently.

The windows are standing wide open, white curtains billowing in the soft wind. Sans' hand reaches out to touch the door. It almost feels soft under his fingertips. It smells like wood.

His forehead drops against the door. He knows it's only warm inside, he knows he's standing in the wind and it's actually cold. But he still feels the warmth seep through the wood and into his skin, feels it curl around his soul like strong, protective arms.

Something hot and wet runs down his cheeks.

Hastily, he blinks his eyes back open. When did he close them?

First, he lifts Papyrus from his back and sits him on the ground beside the door. He doesn't understand why and how, but Papyrus doesn't seem even remotely tired; he immediately reaches for the leaves, crunches them up between his fingers and lifts them to his face, inarticulate noises of wonder tumbling out of him. Bouncing up and down he waves his hands at Sans, trying to show him his incredible discovery that leaves exist.

Sans is holding the vial in his hands.

The red soul inside is not shining brightly now, not tearing worlds apart. It's not even all that angry anymore. It just sits there between his palms, pulsing quietly, glowing just a little. A weak source of warmth in Sans' hands.

His thumbs stroke lightly over the glass. It's full of scratches now, small little edges that cut into his skin, but that's alright.

It's dead, it can't hear him. He closes his eyes, presses the warm vial against his face. When he whispers "Sorry" against it, his breath fogging up the glass, it's for no one's benefit but his own.

The wind is just a quiet breeze. The rustling of the leaves is hardly louder than a sigh. Papyrus is gurgling softly to himself.

The tiny clinking sound when Sans puts the vial down in front of the door echos through his mind like a clap of thunder. He sways on his feet when he takes a step back. Takes a long, deep breath. Puts a hand on Papyrus head.

"Papyrus," he says. Repeats it a few times until he's looking at him. "Wait here."

Papyrus' eyes are big and round and black, as they always are. Now that they're staring directly back at Sans, he finally sees the exhaustion in them too. Papyrus tilts his head to the side and lifts his hands again, this time as a prompt to pick him back up.

Sans shakes his head and gently pushes his hands down. "No. You stay here for a bit."

Confused eyes follow him as he straightens up and takes a few steps back. Sans points at him, the other hand raised with its palm towards him, and fights to put a strict expression on his face. "Stay."

He raises a hand to the door and knocks loudly, three times.

And then

 _~blip_

he disappears.

* * *

Sans falls against the wall, just around the corner from New Home. He can't see it, but he can hear everything.

Papyrus screams.

Just a short, confused yelp at first. But then, after a moment of silence, a piercing wail breaks out of him, the pure horror of being suddenly alone tearing through the calm silence of New Home.

Sans screws his eyes shut, presses the heels of his hands over them until bright spots start blinking behind his eyelids.

It's alright, it's okay, he won't be alone for long.

Papyrus is crying now, wet, hitched, panicked breaths interrupting his loud screams.

The last time Sans left him alone, the scientists stuck a needle in his eye. Sans knows, he knows that, he knows he's scared but this is better, this is better for him. He slides down the wall, face pressed against his knees and hands pulling at his hair.

And screams turn into shrieks, a sound that hurts Sans' throat just listening to it. He wants to press his hands over his ears, but he forbids himself from doing that.

Why has the door not opened, why has no one come to look yet? They must have heard him by now!

The cries get chopped up by frantic breaths, too small to make much difference, but somehow screaming is more important than breathing right now. Sans curls up tighter, trembling, biting back the sobs in his own throat.

It's better this way. It must be. Anything would be better than being stuck with Sans an entire life.

Papyrus doesn't deserve him.

Sans certainly doesn't deserve Papyrus.

Papyrus is screaming his name into the void. "SAN!"

The door doesn't open.

"SA- SANS!"

Sans chokes on his own breath the first time he hears him say his name correctly, a shrill wail laced with agony and mortal fear. It's a physical pain that shoots through him, makes his soul stutter and grind to a halt, before picking up again and hammering against his chest.

"SANS!" Suddenly it's coming closer, leaves rustling loudly, then hands and feet are slapping against the hard ground.

Sans jumps to his feet, not thinking anymore, the sharp pain in his chest pulling him forward as he dashes around the corner.

The crying turns into a sound so shrill it makes the blood rush in Sans' ears. Papyrus is standing on his feet, halfway down the path away from New Home already, hands outstretched and grabbing desperately at the air. Tears and snot are coating his face, his face that has become blue from screaming. When he sees Sans he wobbles forward, crashes to the floor and immediately picks himself back up. His nose is scratched up and bleeding from hitting the ground.

Sans has wasted his very last drop of energy on the most cruel shortcut he could possibly ever perform in his life. His legs carry him forward, every step is agony, but he pushes past it, lifts Papyrus back up and clutches him to his chest.

He falls back, hits his head against the floor, but not for one second does he let go of his brother. The screams are muffled against his shirt now, a constant, breathless stream of "Sans Sans Sans...!"

Sans can't breathe, just sob. His arms shake, his shoulders tremble, his face is pressed into Papyrus' hair. The smell makes him cry harder.

 _I can't do this_ , he thinks.

And he has no idea if he means leaving Papyrus or raising him himself.

 _Both._

Right. Both.

But as his cries slowly turn into nothing more than hiccups, he realizes that one of these options would be infinitely more painful for Papyrus.

* * *

It really seems like he can't make himself get off the floor this time.

If he does, he'll have to leave.

If he does, he'll have to take Papyrus away from here.

Because Sans can't stay in New Home, he can't, there is a vial with a red soul in front of the door and the thought of staying when _they're not alive anymore_ makes him sick to his stomach.

If he gets up, he'll have to find some way to keep going.

That wasn't the plan. The plan was to give the soul back, to let Papyrus be happy, and then ‒

Sans stares at the gray ceiling, thinks back to being put to sleep. How much he dreaded it, how it used to scare him so much.

How much he'd embrace it now.

Papyrus climbed off of him minutes ago already. Tears forgotten, panic gone, how is that so easy for him? Now he's babbling to himself, waddling around to collect leaves and dump them on Sans.

Sans wiggles his toes. The carefully constructed pile of leaves shifts and Papyrus squawks in indignation, pounces on his feet and holds them still.

Sans grins. Leaves cover his face, so Papyrus can't see it, and that's not fair, he suddenly thinks. Papyrus should know he's making things better.

So Sans sits up, so Sans stands up, leaves stuck in his hair and dirt covering his clothes.

He holds out a hand and Papyrus grabs it, no second thoughts, no hesitation.

Sans is shaking in fear.

But walking away from New Home, his brother's hand clutched in his own, he glances back at the dark corner next to the house, where he stood with Gaster. And he silently promises to himself ‒

‒ he'll try his best to be useful.

To his brother, at least.


End file.
